


Someone To Run To

by aadarshinah



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Book 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Character Death, F/M, Genderbending, Magic, Mythical Beings & Creatures, POV First Person, Snakes, Teacher-Student Relationship, Teen Pregnancy, Violence, girl!Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-14
Updated: 2011-10-18
Packaged: 2017-10-24 14:58:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 34
Words: 262,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aadarshinah/pseuds/aadarshinah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A girl!Harry/Snape Story in four parts. When Harry follows Sirius into the veil in a fit of despair, what changes will fate have to make to keep him (or, rather her?) from suffering the same fate twice? Cannon through PoA</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

He heard her laughing. Bellatrix. Bellatrix Black Lestrange. Sirius's cousin. Sirius's murderer.

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't believe. Maybe, just maybe, if he didn't breathe long enough Sirius would fall through the other side of that strange, whispering veil. But he didn't, no mater how long he held his breath.

He was yelling now. Someone was holding him back. He fought against them. He had to save Sirius – that was all that mattered. He was his godfather. All that was left of his family.

He forced his way out of the arms that held him. He'd give anything for Sirius to live. And these were the last thoughts Harry James Potter had before throwing himself through The Veil.

And Time saw what Fate knew. And she turned back whilst Fate shuffled its deck. It had not worked. They must begin again.


	2. In Which My Loud Mouth Saves the Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part One: Fourth Year

There has never been a guiding principle in my life. I never looked to God or Merlin to save me, or studied ferociously libraries seeking my salvation therein, or rested content that, somehow, things would turn out for the best. There has always and only been myself.

I know little about my parents, if they were religious or not, traditional or nonconformist, morning birds or night owls – things that, to the normal person, to the person who has grown up with a father and a mother, mean nothing. I know they were brave: they had to be to fight against Voldemort's precipitous rise to power. I know that they had to love each other very much to marry hardly out of Hogwarts and to die for me when they were just twenty-one years of age.

Still, without them in my life, I have always been buffeted by other hands, ones that brought me to my mother's sister's doorstep, ones that led me to Hogwarts and the third floor corridor there. It wasn't they who forced me to The Chamber of Secrets, where Slytherin and his heir hid their monster, to save Ginny. Nor was it they who sent their friend, my godfather, to save me and the disasters that resulted there from.

Perhaps because of this, or maybe because I'm a fairly ordinary fourteen year old, I've no idea of what to do with my life. I don't know what to make of myself, no plans for after I finish school, no idea if I'm even mentally sound enough to be allowed out on my own, without someone on hand to assure that I don't hurt myself too badly in the incidents I cannot seem to keep away from, though I do try.

The one thing I seem to be good at, other than Quidditch, seems to be acquiring detentions. I'm currently up to two-hundred thirty-eight, well over a third of those having been handed to me for minor infractions by my beloved potions professor, Severus Eteocles Snape.

I suppose this one is not exactly so minor, as Hermione was keen to point out to me, rather about the same par as the one in which I learned dear Snape's middle name for an incident involving a very angry Professor McGonagall, my one hundred eight-first detention, and pudding. Tapioca to be specific.

It went something like this: I was working next to Ron in Potions on a fever-inducing draught (though why anyone would ever want to induce a fever, I don't know) and I was getting very hot. Naturally, I removed my robe. It was no big deal, several others had done so, including Ron. And, okay, so maybe my skirt was tiny bit short and my shirt a little too tight, but Mrs. Weasley had done the school shopping while Ron and Hermione and Ginny and I were at the Cup and I'd done some growing since September. But, I mean, it wasn't like I'd half the buttons down the top undone, like Pansy, or my skirt rolled up, like Lavender.

Still, when Snape walked by and, in his snidest voice, asked if my funds were running so low I had to "advertise my services" during class time now, what else could I do but say, "Unfortunately so, sir," which caused his eyes to boggle just a little bit, and continue heedlessly with an, "I can pencil you in after the feast tonight, if you're interested," that, honestly, I'd been hoping to cause him to drop the subject entirely. It failed, of course, as an unmistakable hush fell over the classroom as even Draco Malfoy, Lord of the Snide, failed to think of anything that they could possibly say.

"I'm so glad you're free, Miss Potter," he said at last, making my eyes bug out a little, I'm afraid, "because you'll be serving detention every night for a month for that."

The story of Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Potter (though they called me "Harry," as does everyone else, for convince) propositioning the Potions Master spread through Hogwarts like a wildfire. In fact, the rumours that Professor Snape and I were secretly "involved" (shudder) almost detracted from the feast that night for the start of the Triwizard Tournament, especially when I stomped on Ginny's foot during Dumbledore's welcoming speech as she related to me something Colin had overheard from Parvati who'd heard from Padma who'd heard from somewhere else that the last time I'd been laid up in the hospital wing had been for the magical equivalent of an abortion of our (which is to say Snape's and my own) love child. It had been a very loud and undignified squeak that earned her a glare from more than one source, but she deserved it.

I mean, really. The things that happen only to me.

So it was after the feast I made my way down to the dungeons in the most conservative outfit I owned, half-tempted to sew myself into the clothing before realizing, with magic at my disposal, that wasn't exactly the most sensible plan. I knocked tentatively on the Potions Master's classroom door.

"Come in," he called. He looked a little dower sitting there, as if the festivity above had been personally offensive to him. At his desk you couldn't tell it, but he was tall and hawkish, with the look of someone perpetually underfed and under-slept. I know how those two things look, I've seen them oft enough in the mirror to find them on other people, though I doubt he is for the same reasons. The eerie light coming from the potions behind him did nothing to make him look more human, though, and with the stacks of papers and tests before him, an uncapped bottle of ink I mistook for blood for just one instant and a well-used quill in his hand, he might have been any of my professors, any teacher at any magical institution.

It was hard to remember he was Lupin's age, the age my parents would have been if they still lived. It was hard to remember that this was the man that Sirius had tricked so many years ago, who still bore anger towards all four of them over it. No, as I entered the classroom it was hard to remember that he was human at all and not some undead, impersonal thing who's mission in life was to hate and be hated by all.

He pointed me wordlessly to the mess of cauldrons to the side of the room by the sinks, leaving me to scrub, scrape, and peel the dried potion off the sides. Washing dishes was something I'd done often enough at Azkaban South, also known as the Dursleys', and cleaning cauldrons was a detention I'd done for Snape several times. I'd the system down, soaking, scrubbing, and rinsing everything in turn and trying to make sure nothing would blow up on me, and overall leaving me free to let my mind wander.

I thought about the upcoming tasks, of course, and who the Hogwarts champion would be. It seemed clear to me then that Krum would be the Durmstrang champion just as much as it was clear that Mademoiselle Delacour, one of the Beauxbatons students, was too pretty for any normal girl's good. I thought about the Seventh Years who were of age, and ran through the strengths and weaknesses of each that I knew. I thought of Sirius, some place warm, and what he would say if he ever found out I had, however unintentionally, been involved in the "propositioning" of his nemesis. I thought on my homework, and how there were some essays I really needed to write before Monday. I thought that I should write Mrs. Weasley with my measurements and ask her to pick up some better fitting uniforms.

I thought about The Unforgivables, why any professor in their right mind would show them to a group of Fourth Years, especially when at least one's life had been destroyed by a man wielding those curses. How Dad had died first, then mum, trying to protect me. How that wand had been turned on me and how, somehow, I'd survived an unsurvivable curse cast by a merciless man.

It was past midnight when I was allowed to leave. I knew tomorrow most those same cauldrons would be dirtied again, but that didn't affect my choice to do something so unexpected that it surprised even me and, in retrospect, probably had never been done before: I apologized to Snape.

"Look, I'm sorry I said what I said." Snape looked up, probably not realizing I was still there. His brief moment of surprise was the most human thing I'd ever seen from him, probably only visible because it was, after all, after midnight.

"Pardon, Miss Potter?"

Weakly, "I wasn't trying to be rude or anything; it was just the first thing that came to mind, okay?" I don't know why I was trying to explain myself to Snape of all people. I was probably just tired, and some of those cleaning potions smell really funky.

Ron and Hermione had fallen asleep on one of the couches waiting for me to come back when I finally returned to the tower. I considered waking them, but thought rather evilly that they could cause the next big stir and have everyone forget about my supposed affair with Snape. I fell into an exhausted sleep the moment I hit the pillow.

Fate was not with me, and my late return from detention with Snape seemed to be taken by all as all the confirmation they needed. I stayed up in my dorm doing homework and generally hiding from everyone until the Halloween Feast.

Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good holiday as much as the next, but a part of me has always felt separate from festivities of all sorts, an intruder on other people's happiness. At the Dursleys'- well, it doesn't much matter about them, but even at The Burrow in normal everyday moments, I feel like I don't belong. I shall never belong anywhere, I fear. I am the only child of people in history books; I am in history books myself, the infamous Harry Potter, The Girl-Who-Lived. And on holidays, watching other people smile and laugh and talk about their families, or watching The Twins and Ron and Ginny interact, generally loving each other, it is the strongest, this feeling that I have accomplished all that there is for me to accomplish, and I am just a dusty history book remnant lingering, waiting to die that lingers within me always.

And perhaps I should have died thirteen years ago in the arms of the mother I never will know because of a bastard who thought he could do whatever he pleased, because he was Slytherin's last heir. Who thought that I and my parents should die for what they believed in, never mind that I was only a baby and too young to have fought against him, too young to have known even who he was or what he stood for as he aimed his wand through the bars of my crib and prepared to kill me.

Perhaps no one expects anything of me, and that's my problem. My Aunt and Uncle want nothing of me other than never to return, and have never wanted anything but my disappearance since I arrived on their doorstep. I could turn into a Lockhart for all my fame and there is no one who will care or say, "She could have done more with her life."

I'm a sea of despair among the revellers as they enjoy the sweets and the newness of our foreign companions' presence. I smile, put on a happy face, and act as normal as possible, but inside I'm… I don't know what the word for it is. I don't know if there are even words for half the things I feel. No one noticed I was down, not even Hermione, who notices so much, because, after all, I am famous and the famous are forgiven much. Thirteen years ago my parents died, but no matter, it's the anniversary of the day I survived and Riddle didn't for whatever the reason, and people are happy. Never mind that I don't think I've ever been truly happy in all these thirteen years.

"Well, The Goblet is almost ready to make its decision," Dumbledore spoke up, drawing me out of my reverie, "I estimate that it requires one more minute. Now, when the champions' names are called, I would ask them please to come up to the top of the Hall, walk along the staff table, and go through into the next chamber where they will be receiving their first instructions."

I wondered briefly who The Cup would pick, but couldn't concentrate on what was going on around me for long. Instead, I put my thoughts to how best sneak up to The Tower after the last champion was named, maybe to finish my Potions essay in the half-hour that I'd have until reuniting with my cauldrons, maybe to catch a nap to make up for the hours of sleep I was sure to miss tonight, remembering what I could, thanks to the Dementors, of Mum and Dad's last minutes.

Suddenly, I realized The Hall was silent, and every pair of eyes within it was staring at me. I looked around blankly, stupidly, and wondered what I had done this time.

"Harry Potter!" Dumbledore called, "Harry! Up here, if you please!"

I turned to Hermione to ask what was going on when she pushed me slightly and told me to head up.

I did, not knowing why. When I did, at last, join Dumbledore, he ushered me through the door the champions had left through, and suddenly I understood.

But I hadn't entered…

But I wasn't of age…

I didn't want this.

When I was in the room where the champions were gathered, I looked quickly for a second exit, but found none, and was about to consider ways that I could kill myself to keep the school's gossip mill from doing it for me when I counted the number of people inside. Krum, the pretty French girl, and Diggory – three. I couldn't be a champion after all; it had to be some misunderstanding on my part.

I sank into a chair relived only to get a heart attack a moment later when Bagman, who'd entered the room after me, grabbed my arm and pulled me forward towards the others. "May I introduce – incredible though it may seem – the fourth Triwizard champion?"

I didn't need this.

But I couldn't explain myself. Suddenly there was shouting and people all in the room, debating whether I should compete or not, and I just wanted to tell them that I had no interest in doing anything of the sort, and then, unexpectedly, I heard Snape's voice interrupt Karakoff's in a tone that he usually reserved only for me. "It's no one's fault, Karakoff. Don't go blaming Dumbledore for what appears to be Potter's unique ability to create trouble even asleep."

"Thank you, Severus," Dumbledore said, taking control at last. He'd get me out of it, I knew. With that, I turned to Snape, whose eyes glinted with something I'd never seen before as he looked at me as if trying to read my thoughts.

The Headmaster asked, calmly, if I put my name into The Goblet.

"No," I replied vehemently.

"It's true," Snape offered, and it took me a moment to process that he was actually not claiming I'd done this to myself. "Miss Potter was serving detention with me last night." I about gapped at him.

"Did you ask an older student-?" Professor Dumbledore asked while McGonagall behind him looked at Snape with an expression of open bewilderment.

But I interrupted. "Excuse me, Professor, but I'm not stupid. I about die on a regular enough basis not to want to do so for fun." That raised a few eyebrows, but they were off again with the arguments, leaving me with no word to get in edgewise.

Eventually it was decided (by them, of course, as I looked alternately at Snape and the merrily crackling fire, as if either of them could get me out of something I never wanted to do) that I'd no choice but to compete. I glared at them as they said this, and Mr. Crouch explained the rules. They wanted us just to show up in November, no idea what we were facing, and have at it in front of the whole school.

Yes, I'd gone after The Stone first year, but I'd no other choice. There was no one I could go to about it and, if I didn't save it, no one would. I knew Fluffy lay behind the locked third floor doors and thought Snape did as well. There was nothing else I could do.

And, yes, I'd saved Ginny second year, but they were going to leave her to die. I knew where The Chamber was, vaguely, that there was a Basilisk involved, and that I was the only Parsel Mouth besides Voldemort alive. There was nothing else I could do.

And, yes, there was third year as well, but there was no time and it was either that or Sirius, my godfather, would die. There was nothing else I could do.

But this... this was something that didn't have to be done. I was not going to risk my life for other peoples' enjoyment. But did they care? No. Of course not. I was the Girl-Who-Lived, always up for a challenge.

I was kind of pleased, actually, following Snape down to detention after all the yelling had abated, that some things remained the same. Snape still hated me, wasn't treating me different, for one, and that someone was out to kill me, as they seemed to think was the case, for how else could my name have gotten in The Goblet? Professors that disliked me and people out to kill me I could handle. I'd been doing it all my life.

I thought, rather vaguely, as I cleaned the cauldrons in silence (Snape apparently not realising the significance of Hell freezing over twice and me thanking him for standing up for me earlier, and keeping quiet) that maybe I should become an Auror. If people were going to kill me, I might as well be paid for it.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

The next few days were hellish. I continued to attend my detentions with Snape; was largely ignored by Ron, who seemed to think, for whatever his reasons, that I'd entered myself, and generally was the subject of stares, whispers, and general ridicule. The only good thing that came of it was, surprisingly, everyone but Snape seemed to forget my accidental propositioning of him.

Still, these days were some of the worst I'd ever had at Hogwarts, and that includes the time everyone thought I was behind the petrifactions second tear. It was only made worse, of course, by Colin appearing in Potions class one day (why does everything bad always happen in Potions?) and saying he had to take me upstairs.

"Miss Potter has another hour of Potions to complete. She will come upstairs when this class is finished," he glared down his nose at Colin, who promptly turned pink.

"Sir – sir, Mr. Bagman wants 'er," Colin insisted. ("I'd rather stay in Potions," I said under my breath, though only Hermione heard me and hid her laugh with a slight cough.) "All the champions 'ave got to go; I think they want to take photographs. For the Daily Prophet, I think."

Snape looked murderous at that instant, and I rather felt, as I'd probably be the one to clean up the mess in detention that night if he did, like helping. "Fine," the professor snapped, but I didn't move.

"Colin, you can tell them that, last I checked, I'm a minor. My picture can't appear in the paper without my guardians' permission." Or mine, I wanted to add darkly, but didn't. As I was sure the Dursleys wouldn't even touch any owl that might arrive at Azkaban South, I felt this was the end of it as Colin slunk out of the room and went back, happily, to maiming my ingredients.

He returned with a scrap of parchment fifteen minutes later.

Harry,

It's taken care of.

– Dumbledore

was all it said. Quickly, I scrawled,

I'm not coming.

underneath it and handed it back to Colin.

When he returned, I could tell I wasn't getting out of it so easily. So with a reluctant look at Hermione that said, "Please, help," I gathered my things and trucked up the stairs after him, really not wanting anything to do with the cup, let alone the Daily Prophet.

We arrive in an unused classroom on the first floor, and everyone was there, waiting for me. I offer them a scowl, and take the empty seat beside Fleur, the Beauxbatons champion. She gives me a small smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes, and I wonder if its because she feels sorry for me, only fourteen and the only other girl, or if its because she looks down on me because I've still not gotten around to owling Mrs. Weasley, asking for help with new robes, and no one – no one – can leave Potions class without feeling a little grubby and dishevelled.

I mean, she's practically a goddess compared to me. I may be famous, but she's beautiful in a way people don't have the right to be. My hair, short and black, sticks up at every angle in a parody of something modern, and is utterly hopeless. I'm too thin – prison food isn't exactly good for a growing girl – and shorter than some third years, and defiantly nothing anyone would show any interest in if I wasn't famous.

Not that I really care about boys. I mean, I like looking at them – what girl doesn't? – but the ones my age are all too immature and all the older ones know better than to look twice at me, because it's not worth the effort.

Whatever the reason, she looks away quickly. Pretty girls don't have time for people like me, don't you know? Just because boys fall all over her doesn't mean-

Dumbledore, taking his place at the judges table now that I had finally answered his summons, quickly introduced Mr. Ollivander, who would be weighing our wands to insure they were in proper working order. I didn't even realize wands could not work properly, so long as they weren't broken and had chosen the wizard and all.

He called Fleur from her place beside me first. Twirling her wand in his fingers, he looked more like someone from a Muggle magic show than anyone who might know a thing about real wands. "Yes, nine and a half inches… inflexible…rosewood… and containing… dear me…"

"An 'air from ze 'ead of a veela," Fleur offered, taking her wand back after Ollivander had created a bouquet with it. "One of my grandmuzzer's." I felt a little lest cruel towards Fleur upon hearing that. I couldn't have been an easy life, being quarter-something, no matter how pretty she was. But mostly I was filled with dread. My wand was not exactly so unspectacular…

Of course, it could have been my natural desire to stay away from things that might end badly. At times like this, I often think I would have made a good Slytherin. I'm far too impulsive, saying things like I did to Snape and all, but maybe the House of Snakes would have curbed that drive. I doubted it, though. I'm happy where I am, mostly, and I'm no less likely to dive head-first into danger then I was when I started.

I missed Krum and Diggory's wand weighing, and found myself being called forward. "Aaah, yes. Yes, yes, yes. How well I remember," the wandmaker mused. I prepared to dock him if he so much as muttered a "curious" in front of all these people. Luckily, that was not necessary, though he did spend a lot of time just looking at my want before creating a fountain of wine with a spell I didn't quite catch.

I was about to run and hit lunch early, but Rita Skeeter was there with her photographer, and so there were questions to be answered ("Harry, how do you feel about being the youngest competitor in a notoriously deadly competition such as this?" Really, do you need to ask?) and pictures to be taken, and generally things that annoy me to be done.

Why can't my life be simple?

So, finally, I'm getting ready to run pretend this whole day never happened because, I mean, I'm so debilitated by the flashbulbs I might go blind, and I've homework to do that I can't exactly put off because I still have another fifteen days of detentions and no time to do it, what, with the first task in less than two weeks and all that. But, before I can even make it a few steps, Fleur of all people calls out, "Alexandrie-Margaux, plezze walk with me."

I stop mid-step and turn to the older girl, about to ask how on earth she knows my first name. I mean, everyone calls me Harry because in first form my name got printed on the roster "Henriet Potter," which the teacher took to be a misspelling of Harriet, and you can tell where they went from there. Before then I went by Éléonore, and in Modern Magical History, The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts, and Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century I'm named variously as, "Alexandria," "Margaret Lenore" and "Alexandria Margot." Occasionally people still call me Alexandria, but, for reasons unknown to me, I was named Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Potter by my parents, and so I am.

I turn to look at Fleur, and my opinion of her triples. Someone who knows my actual name is rare, especially since I've long given in and let people call me Harry. I don't mind. It's better than being called Margaret Lenore. "Sure, Fleur," I answer her, and when we get to the great hall, she takes me to sit by her at the end of the Ravenclaw table, where she and her classmates have been sitting since they arrived.

"You truly did not enter ze contest," she offers, stating it more than asking. I nod, curious as to where she's going with this. "Poor girl," I begin to become affronted by this when she continues, "fourteen ez 'ard enough without zis az well." I still struggle to find out what exactly her point is, but I'm hungry and am not asked much as she talks, leaving me to eat, and sitting with her is better than sitting among the whisperers who want to know how I entered. She goes on along this vain for a while, something about ugly ducklings turning into swans, when she surprises me with the point. "Alexandrie-Margaux," she says again, "you remind me of my sister, Gabrielle." I wonder how, considering how she's done most of the talking until this point.

"Really? How old is she?"

"She ez eight. I 'ave missed 'er much while at school." I must admit, I'm not overly pleased to be compared to an eight-year-old. "I think I shall make you my pet," she says strangely after this, in a tone I'm not sure I like.

"Oh," is all I think to respond.

Laughing, she insists that it's not bad. She wants to dress me up, she says, get me new robes and "do" my hair and generally make a project out of me. From the girls around her – introduced as Simone, Sophie, and Sylvie, though which was which, I've yet to determine – I quickly gathered two things. One, that she was as inflexible as her wand and, two, that she was the sort who always, always, had a project.

By the time I returned with Hermione and Ginny to the tower, I felt rather out of sorts, wondering which was more dangerous: the first task, or the Hogsmeade visit next weekend, where Fleur planed to "redo" me. My confusion lasted well into the evening, scrubbing away at cauldrons as Snape graded papers in the classroom behind me.


	3. In Which I am Mademoiselle Delacour's Project

Never mind the fact that the First Task is on Tuesday, that I've been having detention every night for almost a month for, reportedly, propositioning Professor Snape in Potions class, and I'm the unwilling and unwanted fourth champion in the Triwizard Tournament, I found myself being dragged Saturday morning to Hogsmeade by a quartet of girls from Beauxbatons – Simone, Sophie, Sylvie, and their champion, Fleur – babbling in a polyglot of French and English.

"Fleur, why are we doing this again?" I asked, perhaps for the fifth time since our unlikely friendship had begun a week previous. I had sat next to her at the weighing of wands and, somehow, in those twenty silent minutes and the half-hour of photo taking later, she decided I reminded her of her eight year old sister.

The article in the Daily Prophet the next day only seemed to solidify matters for her. Rita Skeeter, seeming to take words we exchanged as I was forced, quite against my will, to be photographed, as an entire interview. From this, I gathered, I was a beautiful, intelligent girl who had a real superiority issue when it came to my chances in the tournament and ran through boyfriends like the common cold. It was kind of weird to see words that I had never even thought, let alone said, in paper. Nevertheless, after the article was published, Fleur seemed to have an inexplicable need to make me that beautiful girl, the kind that would run through boyfriends faster than you could say tapioca.

"Because, Alexandrie-Margaux," she said in the tone of the long suffering, "no one should 'ave to be fourteen alone."

I wanted to point out to her that I wasn't alone, that I'd Hermione, who was fifteen, and Ginny, who was thirteen, to help me. In fact, I could've pointed out that I was in a large school with numerous teachers, students, and guests, a fact that almost assured I never could be alone in the castle. If I wanted to be really annoying, I could even have pointed out that I had my godfather, who was a convicted, if innocent, criminal, and another of my father's best friends, who just so happened to turn into a werewolf, and, while I didn't exactly know where either of them was, they were around. So what if my aunt and uncle were the human version of Dementors, so what if Ron wasn't talking to me and most of the school hated me for seemingly entering myself in the stupid Triwizard Tournament, and I was serving detention every night? It was my life; I was happy with it.

But, to be truthful, I wasn't happy with it. I'd always felt like there was something fundamental missing, be it a parent, or faith, or love, or something else. I mean, I love Hermione, but she has her books, which is all she really wants, and Ginny's great, but we're not exactly on the same level, interest wise. Me, I've always kind of been a solitary figure, reading maybe a little too much and studying not quite enough, but I've been, mostly, happy with it. It was just, at times like this, I really wished for a parent I could write to without feeling embarrassed about needing bigger robes, one who could storm into the castle and tell Dumbledore on no certain terms was I to compete in this bloody tournament, and who I could expect to come cheer me on when I was forced to compete anyway. I doubt Hermione would even go to the task was on Tuesday if it wasn't for the fact I was competing in it. I mean, she had a time turner last year so that she could fit in more classes, for Merlin's sake; that sort of dedication to school work means things like tasks fall by the wayside.

I want to know really badly how Fleur seemed to know I wasn't exactly the happiest of people at the moment, but maybe she was right. Maybe fourteen was a time when girls needed their mothers, or, at least, a mother-figure. Maybe she just wanted the privilege of saying she'd dressed The Girl-Who-Lived. Who knows. I can't stand worrying about Sirius any more, or the task, or Ron, or if I've dish-pan hands from cleaning so many cauldrons, which is why, I tell myself, I go along with her.

Still, it's nice to be in Hogsmeade not under an invisibility cloak, even if its in the midst of some French girls I hardly know, being taken to get my hair and nails "done" (and informed that, yes, I do have dish-pan hands, oh thank you Snape) and dragged to pick up some better fitting uniforms and some other clothes I might just end up wearing because they're better fitting than anything else I own, even if Sophie or Sylvie or Simone or whoever she was pronounced me sexe within them. I'm not entirely sure I want to evoke any more attention from the Hogwarts population than I already do, but it seemed like a good idea at the time I was shelling out the galleons.

That didn't stop Hermione from pronouncing me a "traitor to the ideals of feminism" when I returned, looking like I'd not just been struck by lightening for once in my life through the judicious use of a curling iron, fake nails, and make-up, or the boys who were in the common room at the time from whistling before I could shoot death glares at them. I still haven't figured how I betrayed anybody by letting some girls dress me up – it was kind of fun, too; something no one else has ever done for me before. I'm not sure I want it to happen again, but it was still nice to look nice for once, and be looked at for a reason as simple as my looks rather than being crazy, say, or evil, or famous. Ah, the simple pleasures in life.

Still, it was through Ginny that she passed along that Hagrid wanted to meet me before midnight at his hut tonight. It's really great, you know, to have two of your best friends not talking to you while the third asks if she can borrow your new clothes sometime.

It seems like I'm exceedingly popular today. I mean, hanging out with Fleur's clique all morning, then this strange thing with Hagrid tonight, and Sirius, I think I've forgot to mention, wants me to be in front of the fire tonight at one, and I still have detention… Whoever would have thought growing up in Azkaban South would lead one to such a healthy social life?

Who am I kidding? I'll probably just sleep all of tomorrow, if stress from the upcoming task lets me sleep at all.

I sit the hours between my return and my detention in a window seat at the Tower, wondering where my life went wrong. I mean, things were going pretty well until this year. Granted, there was the whole people-want-to-kill-me thing continually going on, and the fact that I didn't have the greatest childhood, if you can call a prison sentence childhood, but it was still fairly decent. I had friends, a pseudo-family, a spot on the Quidditch team, but it seems that this year we're all growing apart, or maybe I've not grown and they have, or vice versa, and relations with the Weasleys strained because of Ron not talking to me, and this bloody tournament taking Quidditch from me too – which is just too much, thank you very much. The only bloody thing consistent in my life at the moment is detention with Snape, so much so that, Merlin forbid, I'm almost tempted to get another month's detention with him just so I have someone who I know where I stand with them.

I go to detention that night too angry to change, so I have the pleasure of seeing Snape's reaction to seeing me in tight jeans and a pink halter, my hair behaving and my fingers feeling a bit heavy from the fake nails. It was quite amusing – almost worth all the bother just to see his reaction – albeit delayed, for I had been scrubbing cauldrons for half an hour before he'd even realized I was there, involved as he was in some Potions text.

I find myself wondering if Snape has anything outside of Potions. I mean, I totally know he was a Death Eater and all of that when my parents were still alive, but he's been working for Dumbledore for my entire life. That has to rub off on somebody. Unlike Flitwick or Vector, it's hard to imagine him as having a life outside of Hogwarts. There are always wild stories about some professor, and, for most of them, we know the names of their spouses, their children, their family problems… You learn a lot by being at a boarding school. And you have to realize, after being here for a certain amount of time, that your professors have published some of the books in the library and that they are at the forefront of their fields.

But Snape… he, like Sirius, oddly enough, seems like his life stalled at twenty-one. Their pasts haunt them. Why else would Snape hate me so much, if not for the memories of my parents being still fresh in his mind? I don't think he's ever had a date, or a woman has ever wanted to date him. Or a man; I don't claim to know his preferences. I don't think he's ever been interested in anything except Potions and DADA. In a way, I can almost see him like Hermione, living in the library, hunched over a book or three, studying this, that and the other out of an alarmingly strong desire to learn for the sake of learning. But, with Snape, it seems that everything went wrong. That he realized he was following someone as evil as the bastard who took my parents from me and he wanted to change. Just nobody's ever given him the chance. Except Dumbledore.

I do the mental math in my head, and figure Snape, like Sirius, like Remus, is thirty-four years old. It's hard to think of any of them as that age. All three are so old from the First War, so haunted by what they've seen, yes, but I don't think any of them have changed since '81, when the war ended, when my parents died. In their own way, I think my 'salvation' of the wizarding world led to them being what they are now. Sirius, half-mad from Azkaban; Remus, left alone for so long because there was no one; and Snape, because he was and will always be stuck on the edge of something that ended and can neither redeem himself or betray the Light until Voldemort, who is not as dead as he seems, is destroyed at last.

These are my thoughts when he interrupts my scrubbing to ask me just what exactly I'm wearing.

"I had an assignation run late," I tell him, paying him little mind as my thoughts run wild. It is truly hard for me not to torment myself with thoughts of what I've caused others – I blame my wardens at Azkaban South for that – and my mind quickly tabulates all the pain and suffering I've caused. For a fleeting moment, I even feel sorry for my aunt, who was given no choice but to care for me after the sister she so obviously hated died, but quickly push that away. Any pity I might have had for her is quickly destroyed by the memory of a certain cupboard…

"Really, Miss Potter?"

I can't imagine why he's interested.

"It's after school hours and there's no rule anywhere that says students have to wear uniforms to detention." Believe me, I would know if there was, I've had enough of them. Not as many as The Twins, but we all can't aspire to that level of greatness.

"Yes, yes, Éléonore," he says, surprising me with the use of my name, at least the one most people call me when they don't call me Harry. It's the name on the registry of the school, and when I was sorted it was, "Potter, Éléonore," they called, not, "Potter, Alexandrie-Margaux." I've gathered, from Remus and Sirius, that it was Éléonore that my parents intended to use as my every day name, this not being France and hyphenated names not being all that common, "but why are you dressed this way?"

I'm tempted to tell him that it's not to seduce him, if that's what he's thinking, but think better of it. I'm really not that desperate for detentions, even if it's something to do other then worry about the tasks and the fact that my two closest friends are being idiots. "Fleur has turned me into her project," I confide for no good reason in him. I'm sure it'll come back to haunt me one day soon, "and I forgot to change."

Patiently (and, mind you, this is from a man I've never heard patient in my life, let alone to me), "And why has Miss Delacour made you her 'project'?" he asks.

"Well, she claims it's because I remind her of her eight-year-old sister, but I think she secretly has a brother or cousin she's trying to set me up with, just so she can say she's related to the Girl-Who-Lived." I continue scrubbing.

And I could have sworn I heard a slight laugh, but, when I turn, there's no one around but Snape, and he certainly doesn't laugh, let alone at things I might say. I'm going crazy, that's the only answer, unless there are snakes in the walls and they can laugh, but considering I don't think there's a word for "laugh" in Parseltongue, let alone the sound for such, I doubt this very much.

I really don't know what's coming over me. I swear, usually I get detentions with professors for better reason than propositioning them, even unintentionally. Things like Norbert and trading insults with Malfoy. Usually I can keep my sardonic comments to myself. I blame it on a mixture of anxiety and sleep-deprivation; that's the only thing for it.

And all this use of my actual names, it's going to my head, I swear. Someone called out, "Harry," behind me the other day, 'cause I dropped a quill, and I didn't even realize they were talking to me. It's totally ridiculous. I mean, what girl in her right mind would want to go by a boy's name her entire life? Well, maybe if it were my actual name it wouldn't be so bad, but it's not. I have plenty of names to choose from, thank you very much, and none of them are boys'. Granted, they're French, but still. I think Dad's family must have been French or something. Certainly not the Evans – my horse-mouthed aunt is as Home County as they come. Or maybe they were just serious Francophiles. I don't know, 'cause no ones ever bothered to tell me anything about my parents, except that they died for me and I happen to look a lot like them both.

Speaking of (thinking of?) the French, I've decided that Fleur really isn't that bad. She's just somewhat lonely. If I had to be surrounded by girls like… well, whatever their names are, all the time, I think I might go a little bit mad and draft friends from elsewhere. I mean, whatever else, I am a champion, so I can't be a complete dunderhead, like her friends are. Even if I'm fourteen. And I honestly don't think she has a brother or cousin somewhere, she's just being nice to me in the only way she knows how.

The problem is I really don't know how to be nice back. I mean, with Ron chess and Quidditch usually covered us, and for Hermione all you ever have to do is show some interest in books and homework and you're good in her… book. But look where we are now.

Maybe I could make friendship bracelets with "champion" written on them?

Stupid thoughts like these occupy my last hour of ruining my manicure before slipping out to Hagrid's, detention the perfect excuse for why I'm out late, though I'm under my cloak all the same.

Sometimes I wonder if I could just turn invisible at will, if it's even possible. I feel invisible at times, even with every eye on me. You think if I just went Dark like everyone thinks I will, people will just leave me be?

I thought not.

I feel completely awkward and not a little invisible as I follow Hagrid and Madame Maxime into the forest, for more reasons then the cloak around me. I'm about to turn around so I'm not late for my last date of the night, in front of the Tower fire to wait for Sirius, when I hear men shouting up ahead, and a roar that could only be from one thing…

My mouth dropped open in a way that would have made Fleur snap, because there were four, fully grown, real-life, I-could-kill-you-if-I-felt-like-it dragons in front of me.

Now, let me get one thing very, very straight: I did, in fact, kill a Basilisk with nothing but a sword, some wit, and a phoenix second year. It was very much a kill-or-be-killed situation. If I didn't kill it, Ginny would've died, and while she can be a bit of an annoyance, I don't exactly harbour murderous feelings for anyone not named Draco or Malfoy.

There is, however, a very big and very important difference between killing something that's trying to kill you, and killing something that's trying to kill you for its entertainment value. If I went along with this, I was bound to die, because I am a fourteen-year-old witch, despite the various monikers to my name. I have no extraordinary powers.

My parents did not die, I am sure, for a dragon to kill me for sport thirteen years later. In fact, I'm very certain on this fact.

The pervading knowledge that I was going to die followed me up the stairs and into the Tower, where I arrived, breathless although I had walked at a snail's pace, in the blissfully deserted common room. Oddly enough, it was not the knowledge that my death was seemingly certain that bothered me, but rather the knowledge that I had not lived. I had never had a boyfriend, let alone been kissed. I'd never done anything because I wanted to do it, only because it was required of me. I had done nothing anyway. I would never get to curse the Dursleys properly for being such bloody awful people…

The fireplace crackled merrily, and, magically, Sirius's head appeared there. As much as it is possible for a head in a fire to look, he looked clean and well-fed and rather not like the escaped convict that was my first memory of him. No, he looked like someone who'd laughed at my parents wedding, who'd played pranks in school, and who'd never, ever, considered that maybe the price of talking to his god-daughter through a fire was something a little too high for him to dare.

For the second time that night, I found myself thinking of that most unlikely trio of men, Snape, Sirius, and Remus, and how unfair life or fate or Merlin had been to them, and it was highlighted for me in the look Sirius gave me so clearly that none of them really had ever moved on from that night thirteen years ago, when I had managed to survive and the ones that had, for good or ill, been such a part of their lives hadn't. Because, at that moment, Sirius was looking at me like he was the one that was fourteen and that I was the adult here, like he was waiting for me to say something about how reckless he'd been so he could give the perfunctory, "Yes, Mum," and we could all get on with our day.

I think it was because of this look, so young from such old eyes, that every block of fear I had melted and flowed away and was replaced by mild anger. It was one thing to die, alone, because there was nothing to be done. It was another thing to give into death when there were people you had to live for, because I suddenly knew then that, if I died, Sirius might well follow me, and from there, who knew?

Plus, I really didn't want to die.

And so I told him everything. I spilled to him how Ron wasn't talking to me because he thought I'd entered myself, when even Snape knew I didn't, and how Hermione was angry at me now, and how I felt bad for being friends with Fleur even if I kind of liked her dolling me up, and how Rita Skeeter had made me out to be something I was not, and how I had detention with Snape every night and so I felt like my homework was a dragon at my back, and how I'd never felt more alone in all my life, and, oh, by the way, he might want to find a black suit to wear by Tuesday because the dragon I had to fight and/or kill for the task might well do me in first.

He listened grimly, nodded at the right times, and then told me not to worry so much about dragons.

Obviously, Azkaban had done funny things to his head, 'cause I could have sworn most people, dragon handlers included, would not have said anything of the sort.

No, he was certain it wasn't the dragon I should worry about killing me, but rather Karakoff, the Headmaster of Durmstrang, because he was a Death Eater and had probably put my name in the Goblet, hoping one of the tasks would off me.

"Yes, yes, yes, but how do we keep the tasks from killing me? 'Cause, realistically, I'm not sure how to not get killed by one, other than running very fast in the opposite direction."

He was just about to tell me how to save my skin when a noise came from the stairwell, and I had to force him to go, because I didn't want him to get caught, even though my heart was in my throat and the relief that had begun to sooth my overwrought nerves quickly retreated, knowing it was a lost cause.

It was Ron.

I tried to be polite. But no, that was too much for me. I knew it was wrong, that he'd honestly had no idea what kind of day I'd had, but I couldn't stop myself. "Just thought you'd come nosing around, did you?"

"I should have realized you'd be practising your next interview and'd want some peace."

"Give it a rest, Ron!" I screamed at him, my hands grabbing the nearest thing at hand and starting to fling them in his direction. Buttons, books, and inkwells went flying at him, not all of them thrown. "I'm sick and tired of it. I would give anything – anything – to have half of what you have. I'm tired of listening to you gripe when you don't know how lucky you are to have a family who loves you. You want the attention? You can have it. I don't want it!"

I think I started to yell less attractive things then, but I don't remember what. I just kept yelling and screaming at him until I sank to my knees in the common room, which looked like a tornado had made its way through it, and was shaking from the exertion of it all. Though I do think I said, towards the end of it all, "And my name is not Harry," though I don't think I cleared up for him what I might wish to be called instead. Hyphens and accents do not the easiest names make.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

Sunday morning found me in the library, asleep under my cloak in the restricted section. I'd snuck in there after my row with Ron, hoping to find something on duelling dragons that could help me not die. I was very keen on that, not dying.

I was just so tired after fighting with him, and that feeling of aloneness that Fleur had unkindly stirred was creeping back in on me as I searched the titles, looking for something – anything – that could help me. But I just kept on thinking about stupid things, like how Hermione shouldn't be mad that I did something with other girls, and how I kind of liked the fact my hair wasn't sticking up at every angle any more, and how I really hated being called Harry, and curses to me for ever telling anybody that's what they called me in grammar school.

Add that to the pile of worry that I had for Sirius, who was really quite stupid for being back in the country over a silly thing like me, and for Remus, who'd I'd not heard from since last term and was beginning to worry about, and for Snape of all people, who seemed out of sorts by my thanking him the other night and had since taken only half the usual points from me in class, though that still left me well above the average.

I managed to catch a late breakfast, missing Fleur and her gang entirely, which disappointed me a little, I'm sad to admit. Hermione wasn't talking to me still, nor was half the school, and I'd no idea how to fight a dragon.

I'd no better idea when I went to detention that night, or the next day, when Hermione finally forgave me for – and I quote – "Giving in to pressure to conform to societal norms by sacrificing personal identity to the corporate giant." I thought about pointing out to her that nothing in Hogsmeade exactly qualified as a corporate anything, but didn't feel like another fight with one of the only people talking to me at the moment, even if a large part of our time together was spent sitting in the library.

I did tell Diggory about the dragons though, which kind of made me feel better. And he appreciated the makeover Fleur had given me, which made me feel, I'm sad to say, even better. But Monday night, when I reported to detention, I had no better idea what I could do then I had upon seeing them.

I was scrubbing away when Snape came into the classroom. He seemed surprised to see me there.

"I still have five more detentions to go," I inform him, and go back to scrubbing at the mess someone, probably Neville, had made of a perfectly good cauldron.

"I assumed with the task tomorrow you'd not show."

I looked at him like he'd two heads and one of them was blue. Skipping out on a detention was something so stupid even I'd not done it before.

Oddly enough, he continues to talk to me. I think he might have spent too much time around noxious potions. After all I'm someone named Potter. He doesn't like me. He doesn't like Potters in general. Maybe he's trying to bait me into getting more detentions, because he'd rather not clean cauldrons himself. Yes, that sounds like him, even though I'm sure there's a spell out there that could do the cleaning for him.

"Miss Potter, do you have an idea how to handle the task tomorrow?"

I shrug. "Try not to get too maimed." I wish I'd a better plan than that, but all I'm really good at is Quidditch and getting detentions, and I doubt even he'd give me a detention for when I'm supposed to be getting killed tomorrow.

I briefly consider taking a beater's bat to the dragon, but toss that aside out of hand.

And then I get an idea.

A really evil, totally awesome idea.

I give Snape a wicked smile, and try to figure out how to make it work.


	4. In Which I Find Myself in Strange Places

I snuck out of my "You're still alive" party at the Tower and, of all things, headed down to the dungeons. I was early for my detention, but there's something to be said for menial labour. I don't have to think when I wash dishes or cauldrons or cook. I can fall into the numb stupor that helped me to survive the ten years and three summers I've spent in Azkaban South. It helps me not to think, to forget my life and all that seemed to go wrong in it.

When I was younger, I had a recurring dream that someone would come and whisk me away to a happier place, one where I would not have to cook and clean and hide away in a closet when I was not wanted or needed. I did not know much, not then, only that most families weren't like the Dursleys, that most children weren't like me. It wasn't the second star on the right, or any coherent dream that anyone else would recognize, only that someone, for some reason, would come and take me away and…

When I got older, and Hagrid had told me of Hogwarts, and I was only there for the summers, my dreams became clearer, stranger, more magical. Strange dreams of strange magical laws that would allow me to live with the Weasleys, or Sirius, or anyone else, for any reason.

Sometimes I would feel as if I'd do anything to live my own life, away from them, where I can leave my school books out and see my friends over the summer and actually talk to them on the phone if they could figure out how to operate one. Is that so much to ask? A home where I'm not a slave, where I don't have to put up with my leering cousin or my walrus uncle or the aunt I swear I can't be related to.

The Weasleys were so nice to me, taking me in most summers after I've escaped prison. Ron was my first friend, and Ginny a great gal-pal. The Twins are always great for a laugh, and Bill is so cool in a way that almost makes me want him to ask me out so I can be part of that family, and Charlie is great, even if he's mad for liking dragons so much, and Percy is Percy. And then Mr. and Mrs. Weasley…

But, I ask you, can I really, really be expected to forgive Ron so easily for thinking I lied to him about entering the tournament, when even Snape believed me. I mean, I was in detention, and never wanted a blink of attention in my life…

So, even after the first task, when I was sitting inside the tent they'd set up for us with Fleur, waiting my turn to face the dragon and retrieve the golden egg, I was trying to figure out if there was a way that I could just not compete. The thing is, though, the more I thought about not wanting to compete, the more I felt I had to, like there was no way out, that I couldn't.

So I competed. There was no way I couldn't, however much I didn't want to. I summoned my Firebolt like it was my life's blood, and out flew the thing.

Really though, is a party necessary? I survived, yes, but it's a stupid contest. Not like anyone ever threw a party after I saved the stone, or killed a Basilisk. Killing a Basilisk is a lot harder than out-flying a dragon, mostly because you can't look at the thing until you destroy its eyes.

That's why I went to the dungeon early. I wanted to not think about dragons or Basilisks or anything that reminded me that I was not a normal fourteen-year-old witch. It was at parties, most especially, that I felt so very old. I couldn't stand feeling that old, especially when I had a golden egg to figure out and whatever that meant to deal with, in hopes I would not die again in February.

Not die again. What a very odd phrase that defines my life so utterly in its nonsensicalness.

There were fewer cauldrons then usual for me, and I made my way through them quickly, moving on to the knives, the stirring rods, the glass phials – anything that might keep my hands busy and my thoughts empty.

I couldn't stop thinking though: Who would want me dead enough to enter me in this tournament besides Voldemort? But then one of his servants would have to know that he wasn't as dead as people thought, and have a plan… What would the next task be? Where was Sirius, and was he okay? And what about Remus? Why hadn't I heard from him?

I was interrupted from my thoughts this time by Snape entering. I've got to learn to pay better attention to the world around me. Or think less. That's what I'd been trying to do now, and was failing miserably.

"Hello, sir," I called out sullenly.

"I'd thought you'd be at your victory party."

"I'd rather be here." It's sad when you admit something like that to one of your professors. I mean, most people don't like detentions, with the possible exception of The Twins, but I have helped make all the food at the Head Table taste like tapioca pudding. I don't just open up to professors. McGonagall has tried, once or twice, to get me to talk – I think Madam Pomprey saw a bruise treating me after the Dementors at the first of last year – and Dumbledore has to know something is up, but I've never actually talked about how I feel about my prison sentence with anyone, even Hermione or Ron. Especially those two.

He raised an eyebrow at me. It's hard to equate this man with the vitriolic professor I see in class. I think he, like me, dislikes crowds. Or children. Not to say that I don't like children, but I bet it can get annoying teaching the same things every year to a bunch of students who think you're either A) evil, B) a Death Eater, C) a former Death Eater, or D) a git out to ruin their lives. I always got the feeling that Snape just knew what he was doing with Potions (nobody can keep such an eye on a class and know what everyone, especially Neville, has done wrong, to the stir) and was not a natural teacher. If it wasn't for the fact that, yes, once he'd tortured, raped, and/or murdered people like my mother and her parents, he probably could get any potions job he wanted.

But the fact was he had, for what reasons I don't know, and for that reason he's stuck being an educator, something that's obviously hard for him, and dealing with eleven- to eighteen-year-olds on a regular basis. I really don't care that he can brew the Wolfsbane Potion for Remus or not, but I would like him to be better than learning from a book.

You're stuck with the people you get, though, and so I'm trying to do better by Snape and the rest of the professors – and the rest of humanity, for that matter. I shouldn't just discount them out of hand because they believe the tripe that Rita Skeeter manages to get printed. If I didn't know any better, I'd assume most of what I read in newspapers to be true too.

Ron thinks I'm a liar. I can handle that. Not well, but I can handle it. After all, I did leave the House Elves to cleaning up the mess I made of the common room, and they didn't deserve that. We both reacted out of hand. And so what if he apologized? I shouldn't have to accept something so rude from my best friend in the first place.

Hermione thinks I'm turning into another Fleur, and betrayed her or something for caring that I look like I didn't just roll out of bed. So what? I can have other girl friends. And Fleur is nice, if pushy at times. We actually talk, sometimes, about her family (I've learned her mother's half-Veela, and that it's very rare for such a union to result in sons or even grandsons) and the sister she misses so much. She talks about her twenty-odd cousins, who range between the ages of seven and twenty-three, on her dad's side, and the few times she's met her grandmother's people. She tells me what it's like to have a real family. I tell her about my misadventures here, all the detentions I've gotten, and how I've earned them.

I told her about Azkaban South, though still doing my best to keep it light and without much detail. I told her about how, last year, I spent ages in the library looking through dry magical law books, looking for something to help me. How I'm waiting until I'm sixteen, when I can be a legally emancipated minor, and how I've already written up my petition (it's sitting in my trunk, a rolled up scroll that is currently my fifth draft of the thing) and am more than willing to grease a few palms if necessary to get out of that house. How I'd almost considered finding someone to marry, now that I'm fourteen (bless the prosaic, parochial wizarding laws) to speed things up, but haven't since getting a divorce is annoyingly difficult le by those same rules, and it's not like anyone at Hogwarts is someone I'd want to be with the rest of my life. I've even told her of how I worry about the day I become an adult too, because I might just jinx them all to oblivion.

Is it wrong to have someone I can talk to about such things?

She's already said that I can spend the summer with her family if I want, causing me to have to explain the situation where I'm not in charge of my own life even to that extent. She got righteously angry on my behalf, rather than saying, "Dumbledore knows best," like Hermione would or a, "Too bad, mate," like Ron. It was nice.

But, back to the point, where I'm finding myself telling the Head of Slytherin that I'd rather be cleaning his classroom then at a party celebrating my survival.

He raised an eyebrow at me, and then did the most surprising thing I think has ever happened to me, which includes living when, by all means, I should have died long ago: he took the clean knife from me and dried it while I continued on another one. A moment later, "I find that surprising, Miss Potter."

"I just survived; there's nothing special in that." There really wasn't. The other choice was dying, and I was not ready for that yet. My life was but the leavings of my parents' deaths, but it was mine and I would not let it go without good reason. My own child, one day, perhaps, or all the children of the world.

"Sometimes the ones that survive do so for a reason."

They were strange words, especially coming from his lips, but true. There had to be a reason I survived when Mum and Dad didn't. There had to be a reason why I was sent to Azkaban South and forced through what I, only indignantly, call life there, and why I have cheated death so often since. There has to be a reason. Or else I don't think I could live with the world, Fate or God or Merlin be damned.

Snape had to have survived for a reason. Remus had to have gone on, thinking two friends dead and the third their betrayer, for some reason. Sirius had to have escaped Azkaban proper for a reason. Mum and Dad had to die for a reason. I've not the slightest idea what, but I have to believe that, or else I might go mad.

"Have you started on the clue for the next task yet?"

"It's not until the 24th of February. I figure I can stand one night without anxiety about my certain demise before starting on it." I'm aware I'm sounding negative in the extreme, but I cannot help it. Any endorphins I might have had from surviving have long since been crushed beneath the weight of the knowledge that somebody didn't want me to live, and is bound to try all the harder next time.

"As loathe as I am to say it, Miss Potter, I doubt any of the tasks they've assigned here will kill you."

It's possibly the nicest thing an adult has said to me all year. "Thanks, sir," I respond, the confusion I was feeling seeping into my voice.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

"The Yule Ball is approaching – a traditional part of the Triwizard Tournament and an opportunity for us to socialize with our foreign guests," McGonagall said a few weeks after my detentions had ended, at the end of class one day. "Now, the Ball will be open only to fourth years and above – although you may invite a younger student if you wish. Dress robes will be worn, and the ball will start at eight o'clock on Christmas night, finishing at midnight in the Great Hall."

A dance. Great. Fleur would surely see this as an excuse to take me shopping again. It'd only been what? Two-and-a-half weeks?

The professor continued, while I dutifully 'paid attention' as I started planning on ways to say I wasn't going, let alone with them, to my admirers. I'd have to ask Fleur for tips – it was the kind of thing I knew, instinctively, she was good at.

I kind of figured that McGonagall had found a way to read minds when I was called forward as the class was leaving – some of my thoughts had not been entirely kind – when another piece of painful information hit me face on. "Potter, the champions and their partners traditionally open the Ball, so I-"

I blinked once at her as this sunk in, and then held up my hand. "Stop, rewind, and freeze. I'm not going, so-"

In a long-suffering tone, she started right back in, "Miss Potter-"

My death glare was broken again, so I was forced to listen to exactly why I had to attend, and why she'd be personally making sure that I was, in fact, in attendance throughout the whole thing, with a smile plastered on my face.

It was very Slytherin of her. I should've applauded.

I clung to Fleur for the next week, half-hoping her presence would be enough to deter any who might want to, Merlin forbid, ask me to the dance. I knew I needed a partner, one to go with the gold-coloured dress she'd seen to it that I'd purchased, and that, after that one opening dance, I had every intention of bolting, but I really didn't care. I was making no progress on figuring out what the screeching of the egg might mean, and nothing else really seemed important. Fleur and I, by unspoken agreement, never talked about the upcoming task.

The unexpected task before us, that we talked about a lot.

"I don't know," I told her the last day of term at lunch, facing a double DADA after and almost sickly curious as to what age-inappropriate curses we'd be starting on today. Moody might've given me the creeps, but his classes were bloody interesting. "It's just none of the boys here seem… I don't know, mature enough, I guess."

Fleur and the three S's nodded solemnly, as though I'd just offered them the secret of life itself. "Zat ez all boys," one of them offered – I think it was the dark-haired Sophie, but I cannot be sure. "By ze time zey are worth paying attention to, ze suddenly are 'too old' for you."

From the other's reactions, I gathered this was a personal experience sort of thing.

"You shouldn't 'ave said no to zat seventh year," Fleur began, but I shook my head.

"I said 'mature,' not 'wanting to get into my pants'." This appeared to be an idiom that didn't translate well into French, but I was running late for class. To make it worse, I was stopped on the way by a Ravenclaw third year and a beefy looking sixth year, both of whom I was a bit too rude to as I told them, "No," and was still late to class.

Ron was chattering about something after DADA, Hermione walking quietly beside us. I related my tales of woe, but neither of them seemed to take it properly – Ron laughing that I should just pick the best of the lot and be done with it, and Hermione saying that I shouldn't be so mean to the poor boys.

My, "What makes you think they were all boys?" comment didn't go over well as I'd hoped either, Ron turning Vernon-purple as he coughed and Hermione just glaring at me. Some people have no sense of humour, I swear.

Ron muttered something about finding a date and ran off quickly after that, leaving me to forced girl talk with Hermione in the common room where, I'm happy to report, I am still the subject of stares and whispers, just of a different variety. I'm less happy to relate that their rumours were of my illicit relationship with one Severus E. Snape. Even if there was such a relationship, I doubt the Headmaster would let us flaunt it by opening a ball together at an international function.

My life is so special.

"So, Hermione," I ask, sitting in my favourite chair by the fire, "I take it Ron's not asked you to the Ball yet?"

It was her turn to look at me as if I'd grown a second head. "Ron!" she all but exclaimed, in a tone I couldn't figure out as, "Oh, please," or, "That's the most disgusting thing I've heard all day." As I was trying, she continued, "No. I do have a date, though." I get a little too excited for Hermione as I ask who. "Krum."

I'm happy for her, but whooping for joy isn't something Hermione goes for. So we analyse his intentions for a bit, then she goes off to read ahead for sixth year and leaves me all by my lonesome. Krum. Well, doesn't that take it all?

Neville comes up to me while I'm musing, asking how I've been, all of that. I've not exactly been seen much around the common room, what with my detentions and all, and so I suppose it's a valid question. One thing leads to another, and suddenly I find myself agreeing, strictly as friends, to go to the Ball with him. I mean, I need a date, and he's nice enough. Not the sort I would want to marry or anything, even to get away from Azkaban South, but still, nice. Nice is good. I suppose.

I mean – and I'm not saying Neville's anything like this – but I've got the feeling my aunt only married Vernon to one up Mum, or get out of the family, or something along those lines. And, on the outside, Vernon is a perfect candidate for one-upmanship. I mean, middle-management, private school, Anglican altar boy; solidly middle-class. I don't think she married for love, though, and settled for her own version of nice.

What I want is someone who… well, isn't not nice, but is willing to argue with me when I get stupid, and help me when I decide to do it anyway, and who'll let me get in my moods without taking it personally. And I think if I ever yelled at Neville like I do when I'm in a state I just might break the poor boy.

He does help me with my Herbology homework, though, while I'm waiting for dinner. It's better than thinking on the egg up in my room and the screeches it makes every time I open it.

I should have seen trouble coming when Ginny came into the common room leading an ashen looking Ron.

"What's wrong with him?" I asked, afraid it was dragon pox or something from how sick he looked.

"He – er – just asked Fleur Delacour to go to the Ball with him."

I struggled to contain a laugh. She was going with Roger Davies, and, even if she wasn't, she'd not have gone with Ron, for many of the same reasons I'd not go with him, even if I was desperate for a date. He was just… well, fourteen he might have been, but in many ways he was years younger.

Ginny and I tried our best to console him, but it was a lost cause by the time Hermione came in, and he looked at her with a light I could see was going to get smashed all too quickly. "Hermione, you are a girl…"

"Oh, well spotted," she said acidly, the sympathy that had begun to take hold of her quickly vanishing with our friend's words.

"Well, I still need a partner-"

"I can't come with you," she began herself, trying to explain; "I'm already going with someone."

Pity Ron didn't believe her. It was the best argument I've seen from either in a while.

My pity didn't last long either, because, looking extremely put out I'm happy to point out, he turned his desperate eye towards me. "Right, this is getting stupid. I know you don't have a date Harry, so I guess I'll just go with you-"

I backed up, oh so glad to be last choice here, "Don't look at me, I'm going with Neville." That caused him to baulk. "It's not like I'm dating him or anything, not that it's any of your business, but I mean, he's nice, and, if I have to go, I think the two of us will have some fun."

"Good for you," his sister encouraged, shaking her head at her brother as she did so.

"But, I mean, it's only Neville-"

And so I found myself not talking to my best friend for the second time that year.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

Seeing as how my life seems to be one big serious of unpleasant things, I'm seriously beginning to consider a career as a dishwasher. Things are so much simpler when you clean. Things are dirty, you scrub, and then they're clean. Very simple. Very practical. No grey areas with scrubbing: the dirt, quite clearly, doesn't belong.

It's not so simple, life. I mean, I suppose I could just give up and let Voldemort kill me the next time I see him and let that be that, but, no matter how messy and annoying and terrifying fighting him is, I really want to live. I suppose I could have just turned down Neville too, or rescinded my yes and gone with Ron, because he is the first friend I've ever made, and it is getting tiring fighting with him all the time. I could have also said yes to the first person who asked me, but whatever.

I imagine (as I sit in the Beauxbaton's carriage, one of the S's doing my hair while Fleur does another's, and the last is slipping into her baby pink number) that, if my mother was still alive, she'd tell me something like, "Do what you think is right." Dad, after giving me a lecture on having an agreeable conversation with Snape, would tell me, "The only thing you can do wrong is not follow your heart."

There are only two problems with this that I can see. One, that Dad apparently knew from the moment he set eyes on Mum that he was meant to marry her, and so he's clearly never dealt with fuzzy areas like who to take to a school dance. And, most obviously at two, the only things I can remember of my parents are their dying words, which aren't exactly conducive to healthy interpersonal relationships.

The third thing I should also mention is that my heart, like my head, is also fuzzy. I mean, I relate more to people my parents' age then my own, considering how I've had more civil conversations with Snape this term then I've Ron. Maybe I should have asked Sirius to the ball. He could have come as a dog if he wanted, but either way I'd at least have better conversation than I would with half the population of Hogwarts.

That's not giving Neville enough credit. I mean, he is nice, but nice only gets you so far…

Not that I forgive him for stepping on my toes during the opening dance. Granted, as neither of us can dance, we must have looked a sight, but my toes will never forgive me. Still, after a few dances, my partner and I parted ways, him to torture more innocent bystanders, I to rest my surely bleeding feet. Ron made his way over, petulant after having discovered Hermione wasn't lying about already having a partner, and when Hermione herself dropped by, it was sexual tension I could have cut with a knife if I'd had one handy. I tried with my butterbeer, but finishing it quickly and leaving them to their own devices didn't seem to help, I noticed, as I hobbled out of the Hall and into the makeshift rose garden.

It was nice to get some fresh air, even if walking was a task I wasn't up for quite yet. The heady smell of roses carried me out of the present, and took my thoughts to a future where things were simpler, easier.

Voldemort was truly gone in that vision, I could tell just by the feel of it. Sirius was free at last, and he and Remus were finally able to get on with their lives. Ron and Hermione finally got a clue, and the Weasleys were my big surrogate family still, always welcoming me over for holidays and Sunday dinners. I had the deep and pervasive feeling of being loved, content with my lot in life, whatever that was, and content with what life would bring.

It was foreign to me, that feeling. Blindly, I tried to hold onto it.

I opened my eyes as the sound of couples being ousted from bushes caught up with my daydreaming ears. I tried to hobble back inside but Snape, who was doing the ousting, caught up to me easily.

"Essence of Murlap," he told me, indicating my feet, swelling in my borrowed shoes.

"Thanks, sir. I'll go to the hospital wing-"

"Don't bother. She'll be at the Ball still. Come with me."

Now, one can't help but not follow Snape's commands when he issues them, but even I, with my bizarrely functioning mind, would never have guessed until we arrived that he would take me to his office off his classroom and, indicating I should sit on the small couch therein, get said Essence of Murlap for me himself.

"Thanks, sir," I mumbled, unsure what had come over him.

"You're the idiot who decided Longbottom would make a fine dancing partner; I'm just doing my civic duty to see that the Girl-Who-Lived doesn't wind up permanently disabled from her own mistakes."

Absent-mindedly, I mumble, "I wish people wouldn't call me that," not thinking he'd hear me. I wonder what Dad would say if he knew that I was not only having a civil conversation with his childhood nemesis, but that I'd accepted the Murlap essence he'd provided me without checking it for poison or prank. It's probably the same was what my godfather would say, which is something that makes even my imagination blush.

"What would you prefer they call you? Alexandrie-Margaux?" he asks wryly, sitting down backwards in one of the straight-backed chairs. I suppose he wants to make sure I don't defile his office, though I can't go far, unable to feel my toes as I am. Murlap, while slightly slippery feeling, is making them pulse with life again, though. I wonder how long I can stay awake, because already I'm having trouble keeping upright, my feet in the basin. "I doubt anyone but our Beauxbatons delegates could pronounce it."

"It's better than Harry," I mumble even more quietly, and with a nod he concedes. Here we are, agreeing on something, the Potions Master and me. Hell is frozen over for sure now, and all its inhabitants are clawing their way out now that the way is cleared. My eyes are getting heavy now, shutters that must close as midnight draws near.

He says something I don't catch, possibly asking how a girl could wind up with a name that sounds only vaguely like any of the many she was given, or an explanation of why I, a Brit as far as I know (which is less than I can throw myself with Neville-impaired feet), have decidedly French names. Already I can feel myself falling into dreamless sleep.

"I think I like the name Éléonore," I think I say as my head droops onto the arm of the couch, wondering why balls can't be at more reasonable hours of the day.


	5. In Which I Become a Repeat Offender

I was sure the events of the past week were a dream. I was curled up tight, my face pressed into something soft and smelling vaguely of mint, my back offered to the world outside – a habit I'd learned during my prison sentence, as my "blood relatives" had a tendency to throw things to wake me. I have nightmares, you see, more constantly then when I was younger, and by far more detailed then they ever used to be. There is a green light, like a stop-light exploded, one I now know now to be the light of the Killing Curse, which no one but me has ever survived. There is laughter so malevolent I wish I could say I'd never heard it again, though I'm sorry to say I have. And then there are my parents' voices, and screams I know that they could not have made as they died, extrapolated from that one memory I have. That is my mind's favourite nightmare, but there are others, of Basilisks that loom and turbaned DADA teachers that die as I touch them; things that I have, logically, moved past but that scared the mind of a girl already frightened, in a world so fantastic and un-understandable that it might have been a dream itself. My nightmares have a tendency to wake everyone near me.

I've slept under a silencing charm at Hogwarts since I learned one.

I was warm, though, and comfortable, and woke feeling like I'd just had a very good dream, though I couldn't remember the details – I never could, unless it was a nightmare, - all fuzzy inside. Like things might turn out okay and, indeed, already had. Obviously, my fights with Ron and Hermione were only the delusions of a mind that had eaten too many sweets with dinner, and my entering of the tournament a thought run away with itself.

And then I opened my eyes, any found myself curled up on a too small couch in a dungeon office, a warm blanket placed carefully around me. My borrowed gold shoes were placed neatly near the top of my "bed," glasses folded atop them. My hair and face felt grimy from too many potions left on each for too long, and I strongly had the feeling one gets have having slept in clothes not meant to be slept in.

I muttered the first curse word that came to mind, then a couple more for good measure, and sat up quickly, trying to loose the knot between my shoulder blades at the same time. Needless to say, this didn't exactly work, and I probably came across looking like a floozy with a hangover, as my brain was too busy trying to process the events of last evening.

Ball? Check. Dancing, yes, I recalled that, though my feet didn't ache. Perhaps that part was a dream? Never mind, onward. The necessary Ron-Hermione fight, yes, that was clearly there. Snape-

I'd fallen asleep in Snape's office. Oh, oh my. And, even more startlingly, perhaps, he'd covered me in a blanket rather than wake me.

Someone had defiantly spiked whatever it was Snape had been drinking. Yes, that had to be it. Or maybe the nargles had gotten him and were using him to do their disreputable acts of good-doing and aid-giving.

This is why I really should never be forced to attend balls: without a certain amount of sleep, my mind becomes useless. As a defence mechanism, or something of the sort, I become helplessly tired at night (the only time I would have to myself at Azkaban South) so I can get those requisite eight hours. The only time this has not been true is during times where I've almost been killed, where I'm generally too pumped up on epinephrine to sleep for days. Hermione says it's really because I've never been eaten properly or received adequate medical care until coming to Hogwarts (being the genius she is, she knows things are worse at "home" than I let on) and this is my body's way of protecting itself.

But whatever. I have more pressing problems. I, clad in a strapless gold dress robe that I was seen by all to be wearing last night with clearly slept-in hair, have to find some way of making it back up to Gryffindor Tower (which, as I might point out, is all the way across the castle and many, many floors up) without being seen by student, caretaker, caretaker's cat, or ghost, and without normally helpful items such as an Invisibility Cloak or Marauder's Map, both of which I own, that fail to fit conveniently into an evening bag.

Cursed evening bags. I knew there was a reason I hated getting dressed up. Well, no, that's a lie. I don't hate it precisely, it just makes me feel uncomfortable, like I'm playing something I'm not. Too many days being spent locked in a cupboard and treated as subhuman, I suppose. (Hermione, if I told her this, would give me a very long lecture on why I shouldn't let what other people think of me get me down. Fleur, on the other hand, would just say something about me looking nice all the time, I just needed better clothes to look my best. You can see whose company I, obviously, prefer.) Nevertheless, I've lost that stupid evening bag. I always forget stupid things like that.

Out of habit, I fold the blanket Snape has strangely provided me and place it neatly on the couch while I think of how to get up to the Tower. It is both a Saturday and the hols, so if I go straight up to the Charms corridor from here and then cut across through the passageway behind the tapestry of the drunken gnomes… There's a fairly good chance that I can get to the Tower without anyone seeing me, save a Gryffindor or three, and cleaning up and changing before anyone save my room-mates realize that I spend the night elsewhere.

A humorous thought on what Sirius's face would do if told him I spent the night in Snape's anything flits its way through, and I catch onto it, trying to ride this still-high feeling I have of having slept a decent sleep. It keeps a smile on my face as I slip a thank you note:

Thanks.

\- Éléonore -

into a desk drawer and my borrowed shoes upon my feet, and begin my trek upwards, hoping to God and Merlin that its still fairly early (though I doubt it) and everyone but me is still sleeping off the Ball, content in their own (or, at least, somebody's) beds.

Yeah, I didn't think my chances were good either.

Really, I didn't have time for the stir that my absence, if noticed, will cause. The egg still shrieks at me worse than my so-called aunt every time I open it, I've work for next term to do, friendships to repair, shoes to return to Simone (or was it Sophie?), what I'll do with what I learn from the egg (if I ever learn anything from it) to figure out, and, most importantly, ways to get people to stop calling me Harry and start calling me Éléonore to decide upon.

Oh, yes, and psychoanalyse every interaction I've had with the man over the last three-and-a-half years to figure out why Snape might have let me crash in his office on Christmas night, and provide me with a blanket with which to do so, albeit after the fact. That should take some time. I think I'll content myself with the fact that… well, no, I'll probably obsess over it until I get a chance to talk to Snape and ask him myself, which, because I really don't need any more detentions, I probably will never do. I mean, what if that day in Potions he only got so mad when I inadvertently propositioned him because he wanted to be so propositioned by me and was not fond of seeing it come out as a joke? I mean, he's twenty years older than me – though, who knows what he's hiding under…

Oh, Merlin, I did not just think that. I did not just think that.

This is sooo why I should be allowed to sleep and not made to attend balls. I mean, look how it turned out for Cinderella: sure, she was all happy being whisked away from her own personal Azkaban, but they always cut the story off before she learns that Prince Charming is just as vapid as he appears (looks and brains hardly ever come in pairs, least of all in fairy tales) and now she's mother to three screaming babies, left at the castle alone while he goes off with his mistresses to exciting places, and still expected to be pretty and polite (which no one ever prepared her for, not as a maid in her own household) when he comes home for dinner.

Maybe I'm the one with nargles. Or maybe it's just because I was given my own fairy tale, and found it not quite as glamorous as it was made out to be. I'd rather be here then Azkaban South, Merlin yes, but it's a lot less dangerous there.

Years of sneaking (and some personal training with The Twins) and some luckily sleepy inhabitants of the castle allow me to make it to the tower without being seen. Though the Fat Lady did give me an accusatory stare I suppose I deserved when I climbed through the portrait hole. Slowly, I peek my head in, to find the room littered with a couple of older students who were just too tired to make it the extra feet to bed, but no one seemingly is awake yet, and no one I know well is amongst them. I slip off the shoes, lest they give me away, and make my way through the sea of slumbering students.

I'm on the first step of the girls' stair when Neville comes tumbling down the boys', looking quite happy. This certainly can't have been my doing; something must have happened after I left to, er, lick my wounds.

"Hiya, Harry."

"Hi, Nev," I whisper back, finding myself ducking down in case anyone heard and looks up from their sleep to yell at him to go back to bed, where people belong at this hour of the morning. Whatever that hour might actually be. I'll have to figure that out soon.

At a normal level of speech, "Have fun last night?"

"A blast," I murmur, surprised to find that I'm telling the truth. I did enjoy myself, and the dancing was fun, even if we probably looked like fools and my feet were all-but-bleeding there for a while. Maybe I should consider attending other school functions for the future. I can't think of any others there might ever be, but that's okay, it's probably the novelty of it anyway. "You?"

"Yeah. I ran into Hannah and we got to talking… We're going to Hogsmeade together during the next weekend."

"That's great, Neville," I enthuse, or do my best to enthuse in a hushed tone.

"You don't mind, do you?"

"No, I'm really hap-" I hear footsteps coming down the stair behind him. I would have known that thundering tread anywhere. "I gotta-"

"Hey, Harry," Ron says, choosing today of all days to wake up early (whatever time it actually is).

I try to hide in the non-existent shadows. It's a lovely, bright, snow-covered day. A winter wonderland. Because, or so I've been told, the weather will not change to match my moods, and weather magic is dangerous for all parties involved. I'm given to understand it involves several. "Hi, Ron," my whisper is an octave higher than it should be.

"Enjoy the-" he begins, and then, eyes narrowing almost comically as he realized that, yes, I was still in my dress robes and was, obviously, only just sneaking in, "Er, Harry, where exactly have you been?"

The overprotective lilt in his voice would have been endearing if I was not both, a) unwilling to answer where exactly I'd been, and, b) perfectly capable of taking care of myself, most of the time. "Er," I say slowly, trying to think of a lie that involved something other than tapioca, my brain only providing me with ones involving the pudding for some strange, sleep-estranged, reason. "Out," I offer at last, deciding, if he pushes it, to inform him of just how much business it is of his. Which is to say, none at all.

"Out where?" Neville, I see, is starting back up the boys' stair, an apologetic look on his face.

"Er…" I begin. So much for my rant. I suddenly can't think of any words that aren't the truth, or cassava-flavoured puddings, so I, naturally, in my most infinite and impeccable wisdom, spit up the truth. "I fell asleep." The things I do because I really can't stand fighting with my friends, no matter how angry I am with them. Hermione says this is because I have the lingering fear of abandonment only natural to an orphan, and that she and Ron should be less enabling, but I've not seen any of that yet.

"Where?"

He is neither my brother nor my father nor my keeper. I do not have to answer him. It is only my own subconscious, wanting everything to be right between the three of us, which makes me want to give him the, "Snape's office…" er, answer.

"What!" he screams so loud that most the occupants of the common room are wakened.

Back-peddling fiercely, "Now, Ron," I try, taking another step up the girls' stair, where he cannot follow. "It's not what you think." I doubt he even hears me, though, over his own rage.

I just can't take this at the moment, and head up to my dormitory with him going on angrily at the landing, throwing myself upon my bed, taking in the smell of my gardenia shampoo, which has been permanently impregnated into its threads. Deep, cleansing, breaths, I tell myself. I will not go downstairs and commit murder in front of witnesses. I will not-

"Harry?" asks Lavender, either woken by the slamming of the door behind me or the echoes of a certain red-head's temper while it was open, who obviously noticed my absence, "Is that you?"

I groan into my pillow. And the day had started out so well too.

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Through a combination of knowledge of where the kitchen is and the hols, I was able to avoid pretty much everybody until the start of term, my dear friend Snape among them. Ron was still upset with me, I knew, but, as I'd told him repeatedly, he'd no right to be. Hermione was outraged, for different reasons, but seemed to at least realize it had in no way been intentional, which was good, because I did have to share a dorm room with her, and she can be quite a witch when she's angry.

I found myself missing Fleur's company, and even those of the S's, but couldn't bring myself to leave the safe, whisper-free confines of my dorm, even to see her. Some champion I am. When it comes to Basilisks and dragons, I'm apparently as cool as a cucumber, but a little thing like a friend's anger…

Hermione's right. As always. Azkaban South has made me neurotic and unable to handle my life in a healthy way. At least Crookshanks loves me.

By the time January starts, I've seen quite enough of my room-mates and am forced by the inexorable movement of time to begin the second term. I'm quite confident, sliding into a seat at the Ravenclaw table beside Fleur like I'd been there every day this past week-and-a-half, that no one besides me and Ron know exactly why we're fighting this time.

And then an owl delivers the morning paper to the girl beside me, and I'm greeted with my own picture (I knew photo shoots were a bad idea) scowling at me and the rather unambiguous headline:

Potter, Victim or Gold-Digger?

By Rita Skeeter

followed by a rather unflattering article.

Alexandria Potter, known as The Girl-Who-Lived, is a girl of many talents. At the age of one year, she was responsible for the downfall of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Most recently, she has been named a champion in the infamous Triwizard Tournament, the youngest since Fredrick von Healdsburg of Durmstrang Institute in 1436, who turned fourteen shortly before the first task of that Tournament. Many have remarked upon the seemingly charmed life of the Potter Heiress. (I snorted there, reading over the Ravenclaw's shoulder.)Successful student, Quidditch Star, and winner of numerous school awards for bravery and sportsmanship, Miss Potter has recently been voted by Teen Witch the "Most Influential Teen Star" for young witches the third year in a row.

Despite all of Miss Potter's many charms, this reporter has reason to believe that all is not as well as it seems inside the hallowed halls of Hogwarts School, at least not for this champion. From sources that for good reason wish to remain unnamed, this reporter has learned that one professor, Potions Master Severus Snape of Kent – who, readers may recall, had all charges of being a Death Eater, one of You-Know-Who's supporters known to use cruel and often inhumane spell-work on Muggles and the Muggle-born, dismissed during the trials of 1981, though they were never fully dropped – may be eliciting favours of a sexual nature… POTTER continued on pages 2, 7, 8, and 14.

From the whispers around me, I gather that the article goes on to ask whether or not Professor Snape is entirely responsible for his supposed misdeeds and whether I, as it ends on a cruel note, "[am] not satisfied by the slice of fortune fate has afforded [me], and [am] after the Prince Fortune, to which Mr. Snape is the sole heir, currently valued at half-a-million Galleons."Ron, I note, is glaring at me from across the Great Hall, while Hermione wears a look of one who suffers fools.

"Fleur," I ask, turning towards the girl, who has throughout my over-the-shoulder reading of the headline story been reading a letter from her sister, "Do you think Professor Snape has been 'eliciting favours of a sexual nature' from me?" Baulking, she replies a negative, but not before turning to look at the man in question, who is stoically at his seat at the head table, though if she knew how he'd healed by Neville-inflicted injuries the other night and let me sleep on the couch in his office, she might not look so repulsed by the idea. "Well," I said, trying to shake thoughts of the sort of thing that have gotten me into this situation from my mind, "that's good. Now, if you don't mind, I think I'm going to find Professor Dumbledore."

A Daily Prophet is in her hands now, and, reading the front page, she informs me both that she understood and that she was surprised that I won Teen Witch's contest this year, considering how Celestina Warbeck's daughter has been, apparently, touring the continent raising money for dragon pox awareness. The things I fail to know about myself, I swear.

And the things they let get published! I'm a minor, for Merlin's sake. Aren't there supposed to rules about our pictures being in the press and our names mentioned? This sort of thing is… unacceptable…

"Headmaster," my voice torn between an indignant squawk and an I-could-cry-I'm-so-angry squeak as I storm his office, "who is my publicist and why hasn't he been fired?"

He uses a tone I've learned parents use when they don't want their child to know there's not a Santa Clause or taxes, "Miss Potter, you don't have a publicist. I assume-"

"Well, why the hell not? If my name's going to be spread all over the papers, I want some spin control, Professor. I mean," because, I see, he's looking at me carefully through those half-moon glasses with a studied twinkle, "you don't think any of what that woman wrote is actually true, do you?"

"No, Severus assures me-"

Merlin, he needed to be assured. Which means he thought. Which means he knows I crashed there the other night. Which means he thought it was possible.

Oh Merlin.

I skip out on classes for the morning. I just couldn't face the Hufflepuffs, who are already peeved as it is with my presumed entering of my name into the goblet, or the, Merlin forbid, Slytherins. Or anybody. I hide out in the owlry, but by lunchtime the hate mail starts to arrive, and I can't get away from it and have to call Dobby, who Hermione luckily discovered working at Hogwarts, to help me burn it all, and sneak me some food so I don't starve to death in my second exile. I like Dobby. You always know where you stand with him, even if he's a bit mad.

I went to his classroom while everyone was at dinner, and start in on the cauldrons there to keep my hands busy.

I mean, how do these things get started? One word from my teacher, one sarcastic comment in reply, and all of a sudden I'm his, his sex slave or something. I suppose Rita Skeeter could have heard the rumours from anyone, it'd spread everywhere sure enough, but how had she known I wasn't in the Tower Christmas night? I'd not seen her since the first task, almost two months ago…

And aren't there more exciting people to write about? I'd not have thought that people would be interested enough in the doing of a schoolgirl, even if that girl happened to be one who lived thirteen years ago, for it to make the news. Well, I suppose it was the thought of what Snape might be doing to students that made front page, but there was also the idea that I was nothing better than a gold-digger, as it claimed on pages 7, 8, and 14, I'd discovered, though I'm only fourteen. I mean, fourteen. I can marry if I wanted to – I know the laws well enough to know that – but I can't think of a single example of someone getting married so young since Fredrick von Healdsburg was killed in the second task of his tournament, where they were unable to treat the burns he suffered trying to outwit a flame-breathing bull. I'm also fairly rich in my own right, I'm fairly certain, so why I might be digging for anything is another question, but one I can ignore for the moment.

Merlin, what would my parents say if they saw today's headlines? They must be turning over in their graves! And Sirius – and Remus too – must be halfway here with intent to murder-! And Mr. and Mrs. Weasley! They must be furious, though with whom I dare not guess.

This is why I need a publicist. I must send out owls searching for one if I don't die from embarrassment or dish-pan hands.

I'm listening closely for his approach, and so I hear him when he enters the hall this time, his walk more the soft glide of fabric over stone than the slap of leather on stone. I hear him pause, hearing the sound of the running water, the splash of my scrubbing disrupting the ethereal hush of the dungeons. When I was a first year, I was certain this classroom had been used for other things than potions brewing in the past, but now, in moment where I wait for him to pass through the door, to see if he will pass through the door at all, I know that was never the case. The silence does not reek of that kind of pain. No, these halls are alive with the apathy that has filled them, the heaviness of no one caring which, oft times, is more dreadful and more condemning then hate.

Will he enter? My nerves suddenly flare as if about to face a dragon. What do I say to him if he does? How can I apologize? He insulted me, I escalated the conflict; we're both responsible. Besides, I've already asked for and received forgiveness from him for that slight. And he, he's broken through whatever wall he's built around himself enough to be kind to me, a Potter, the last Potter, and not only let me sleep on his couch, but gave me a blanket. He didn't have to do that. He could have shaken me awake. He could have levitated me into the hall. He could have, if he was the type of person that people thought he was, taken advantage of the situation. But he didn't. He's not the man people see him as, what he wants to be seen as. He's… he's more.

My breath doesn't make it even as far as my throat as he paused outside that door – it catches in the back of my mouth, under my tongue, and hisses out of lips trembling with words unspoken and unspeakable. My scrubbing slows, and then ceases altogether. Was this a mistake?

I want to know how we got to this point, a Potter standing in his classroom willingly, a Snape hating my family so much that the former is all but inconceivable. I want to know what my father, and Remus, and Sirius – and Wormtail too – did to him all those years ago create such a deep and abiding hatred that, stalled as they all are on the cusp between twenty-one and adulthood, between war and peace, between giving in or moving on, he can still hate a man dead thirteen years so much that it has clouded his judgement of me all these years, until I started to scrub cauldrons of my own accord. I want to know the secret no one will tell me, the one that will unlock the mystery of this bizarre circle of hate and shame. I can taste the sourness of anticipation and worry on my tongue.

I release a breath, waiting for him to turn around and leave as I'm suddenly sure he will, red shame for my own impulsiveness turning my insides into jelly.

He enters, a sweeping murmur of fabric.

"Sir, I think we need to talk," I begin, my words slow and measured. I feel squeezed, constricted by a past I do not know and cannot change. I want to make this right.

"Indeed, Miss Potter." I do not turn to look at him, but I know he is, by now, seated at his desk, trying to recreate the position of authority he has over me, what he wants to have over this entire situation. This is his only chance, I know, at something akin to a real life. No one else will have him, not with the Dark Mark on his arm, branding him forever as a boy who made a foolish choice, or who hated people like my mother enough to wish a fate worse then she received upon all of them. I do not know which, but I think it is the former. He would not have recanted, he'd not be here if he'd not been that boy my father and his friends tormented so badly it has brought us, almost two decades later, to this position now.

I pick up my rag and continue what I was doing, eyes focused on the dull, worn metal beneath my fingers. "I do not know how Skeeter got her information, but I didn't tell her any of that nonsense."

A pause and then, "I never thought you did."

I babble a little now, nerves getting the better of me. I probably won't sleep for a week because of this. "They just can't print things like that about people – its libel! We can make them print a retraction. They could probably fight it, say they thought it was for the common good people knowing, well, what they thought, but I am a minor. I don't know who might be my guardian in these matters, but whoever it is, I'm sure they didn't sign anything saying that they could put my name or picture in print. It won't stop it, now that that… is out, but it should curb the worst of it. Get Rita Skeeter in the spotlight for once; see how she likes having things printed about her!" My outburst is followed by that uncomfortable silence again, the one wherein I can feel the weight of all the not caring these walls have felt over the years heavy upon me. It is almost like the cupboard, the weight, only colder and somewhat danker. But, in the same way, its nothing alike, because, like it or not, Snape is here too and he has to feel something for me other than complete apathy, not after all those detentions and all those years of remembering the wrongs done to him by my dead father.

The silence continues. The cauldron is clean now and faintly glistening, but still I scrub. I don't think I can stop until I have a response and, if there isn't one, I shall stay here, cleaning this one pot, for all eternity, for I feel this is a turning point. To what, I don't know. Maybe the patching of everything Dad did to this man, maybe this man's utter hatred of me in my own right; maybe nothing at all, and it's just a feeling I have for no reason, like nerves before a Quidditch match.

Then, at last, his tone snide and reproving, "They'll forget about it in time."

"They always do." I set aside the cauldron to dry and begin on another, as equally tarnished and mess-encrusted, and continue on with my work, trying to figure out what has just happened here. I know that I shall have to face everything again in the morning, and that I can't hide in the owlry forever, and that I still have to face Ron, and Sirius, and return those shoes to whichever one of Fleur's friends I took them from, and figure out what the egg means when it screeches at me. I know that Snape, for some reason, let me sleep on his couch and didn't use it against me at all, or accuse me of wanting his money, or him.

I do not know what it means. But, surprisingly, I'm actually looking forward to finding out. I scrub, and let myself relax in the understanding, if not understood, silence between us.


	6. In Which I Learn the Meaning of French

I think I could kiss him, I'm so bloody happy! I mean throw-my-arms-around-his-neck-in-the-middle-of-the-Great-Hall-at-lunchtime-and-try-performing-a-tonsillectomy-with-my-tongue happy. I'd consider trying it, but I don't think it would go down well in any department if I were to try.

It's so strange, this bubbly feeling I'm getting right now for no reason at all, just sitting here thinking about how happy I am. Merlin, I bet I have a goofy smile plastered on my face and everything. I raise a hand to my face, the other still cradling the egg, though it's more then secure in my lap. Yes, I can feel the smile there. I try to remove it. I think of scary things, like Mrs. Weasley when she's angry or the Skrewts we finally finished in CoMC. It doesn't work. It's still there. Damn. I can't leave Snape's office with a goofy smile on my face. It would both ruin his reputation as Lucifer's love child and give the papers more ammo.

Oh, yes, I'm in Snape's office. In a dressing gown. It is at least eleven o'clock at night, if not later, and I'm stifling yawns already. I'm almost happy enough to kiss him too, but I think that's the want-of-sleep talking, if not the head injury.

So, let me just say, despite the fact the past fortnight has been awful, what with every dish-rag newspaper in the country and more than a few from the continent asking about what exactly is going on between me and Mr. Snape of Kent and making up things for me to have said when I refused to answer them, and everyone in school staring at me once more and opening up that bag of innuendos I started back before Halloween, and having to fend off a letter from Mrs. Weasley (who said if I didn't give her an explication as to my activities within twenty-four hours of her letter she'd castrate a certain Mr. Snape of Kent, but also included a recipe for a prophylactic potion in case it was "what I wanted." The letter I replied to, the potion, well, I didn't know what to say about that, so I just ignored it entirely, counting the number of brothers Ginny has against the likelihood of it actually working – not that I was tempted to test it out anything. Still, it was about as awkward as if Aunt Petunia had handed me a box of condoms with my lunch in grammar school and told me to play nice), another from Sirius (who wanted to know what had happened to spark Rita's story, by Merlin thankfully not taking it seriously, but still wanting me to send envelopes large enough for some of the curses he wanted to send his old school chum now that he'd been provided such a perfect excuse for them), and a third, surprisingly, from Remus. I guess threats to my virtue bring out the best in everyone.

Anyway, Remus's letter went something like this:

I'm sorry for not writing to you sooner, Éléonore (he, like Sirius, and the Dursleys did before first form, calls me by Éléonore. I'm given to understand it's the name my parents called me, before they died and all), but I can honestly say, until now, I have not known what to say. Naturally, I do not believe the rubbish they have printed about you in the Daily Prophet, but even Skeeter needs a grain of truth to create her lies. I do not know what may be going on between you and Severus, if there is anything at all. You do not have to tell me if there is, nor do I care whether you are involved in any way other then student and teacher. It is not my place to pass judgement on such things and, so long as no one is hurt by it, I will not stop you.

I will say one last thing on the matter before leaving: be careful. My generation came of age in the shadow of war. Yours was born in its darkest hour. Such things leave behind marks that cannot be seen nor can always be healed.

and then, as promised, drops the subject entirely, and goes on to tell me how he's been looking for work, and how Padfoot has been keeping him company during full moons at his mother's old place, and how, because of the Black's preternatural desire to be left alone, the house is so well warded that the whole Auror division could be standing right outside the doors and never see the house at all. I like Remus. Only he'd be so wonderful as not to care whether I am having a torrid affair with Snape so long as we kept our bedroom activities free of virgin sacrifices. When I wrote back to him, I asked for him to write down some names of lawyers, you know, while he was out and about looking for a job and all, and what do you know? He sent me a package with a set of like twelve basic law books he found at Sirius's place, asked me why I needed a lawyer, and has been on the lookout for a publicist ever since.

I wonder why Sirius never told me he was crashing at his family's old place, let alone with Remus, but Sirius never did seem to be a man of details.

In case you haven't guessed, I've had at least three owls after my blood at any hour of the day, which can get quite disruptive, and nobody seems to know any way to keep them away. My first line of business, after finding a lawyer or, rather, a law firm, is to get them to sue the Daily Prophet in general for libel (Rita Skeeter in particular for defamation of character) and every other news-rag out there who picked up on the story for being a public nuisance, though I don't know if that last one is possible. Then, of course, I shall undergo the great undertaking of suing the Ministry for illegal imprisonment of Sirius, as they never tried him for the crime he was suspected of, which should count as going against habeas corpus or the wizarding version of such. And then either Sirius will be free to take custody of me like he always should have been, so I can avoid another summer at Azkaban South, or I'll be old enough to submit my petition for emancipation.

Maybe I should consider a career in politics. Or law. Because I'm aching to sue somebody. There's something I enjoy in the thought of arguing with someone under nicely polished rules – and its a lot less messy than arguing with wands.

I was just so happy after, I dunno, making up with Snape that it gave me the courage to my classes normally the next day and do my best (which was better than my usual, I must note, considering I've been bolstered by this point with assurances from my various non-related relations – Sirius, Remus, and Mrs. Weasley – that no murder shall take place without my say-so) to ignore the gossip and the accusations that come at me from every angle. It didn't seem to matter. I knew the truth, he knew the truth, and the people who mattered were also informed, so who cared what they thought? Still, I must have worn a blush the entire time I was in class or the Great Hall.

Just yesterday morning, for instance, I was eating breakfast with Fleur and the S's, whom I still can't tell apart for the life of me, though one is blonde, another dark-haired, and the third has some artificial shade of red, and trying to explain to them why the English feel the need to serve kippers with breakfast (though their explanation of escargot has made me no less reticent to try snails with any of my meals) when Draco suddenly took the seat next to me.

"Potter," he said, his tone the usual nasal one he reserves for people he thinks he's better than, i.e., everyone, "what do you think you're doing?"

"Eating breakfast," I replied candidly, not bothering to even look at him. I will him just to insult me already and leave me be.

This throws him only a little, unfortunately, "I mean with Snape."

"Nothing at the moment." I think I would have noticed if I was in flagrante delicto with the man, but you never know with these things.

"Now," ask if I'd not said anything at all, "I can understand someone in your position wanting to marry up and all that," his goons are eyeing the food behind him while Pansy is hanging on his every word, "but I'm a little insulted that I apparently wasn't even considered. The Malfoys of Devon are twice as wealthy as the Prince Family." I consider what part of my anatomy to tell him to bite as goes on. "Now," he seems to be looking me up and down at this point like I'm, I don't know, a horse or something, "Pansy and I do have a marriage contract to consider," ah, the joys of pureblood youth. Marriage contracts and unfortunate hair gel purchases, what fun, "I don't think she'd have a problem with a legal concubinage."

He looked expectantly at the girl, whose nose went a notch higher then it already was into the air, "I would have thought you'd have better taste then…" she trails as I fume into my porridge. I tell myself it's not worth the detention I'll receive if I fling it in her perfectly manicured hair.

"I have always let my charitable works get the better of me." My hand griped my wand underneath my robe. When he paused to ask me what I think of his offer, I kindly blasted him across the hall with the Banishing Charm Flitwick taught us yesterday and offer another to Pansy and the goons if they'd like, though both refuse, oddly enough. I accepted the detention offered for my kindness with an aplomb only suited to a Potter (I give The Twins, who are applauding across the hall, a solemn bow) and serve it with, shudder, Flitch that same night.

The exciting part – and the reason I'm so happy – is Diggory is a prefect in addition to having a handsome face, a very appreciable form, and his proper place as true Hogwarts champion. The reason I'm willing to risk French kissing him where his girlfriend, a sixth year Ravenclaw every boy seems gaga over and who, I'm also told, is very handy with a wand, might see is that he told me to take a bath with my egg. Weird, I know, and if he wasn't half so hot or a fundamentally trustable guy I'd never have done it. But I did. Tonight, a couple hours after I finished the cauldrons in the Potions classroom, though, oddly, Snape had been nowhere to be seen…

Now I just need to figure out how to breathe under water, swim in said water, and what I might have that I'd be willing to need to breathe under water to retrieve. I'm actually doing better on the first problem then I am the last. I mean, it's not like anyone is going to take Sirius and put him beneath the lake; even if he'd consent to it, he's a(n illegally) convicted criminal. You just can't have suspected mass murderers show up at school functions. It's just not kosher.

So, in dressing gown and Invisibility Cloak, handy map in one hand and a bag of toiletries plus golden egg in the other, I started my climb back to the tower, keeping an eye out for Filch (scrub the flagstones of the great hall by hand, that's what he made me do. I'm in negotiations with Dobby for delivery of massive amounts of tapioca pudding to the man's office in exchange for socks) when I notice a dot in Snape's office and, unconscionably, find my feet taking me in that direction before I read the name bouncing along beside the dot:

Bartemius Crouch

My curiosity was peaked – why would a man, so sick he sent Percy of all people in his place to a ball (and who in their right mind sends Percy to any social function?) be in Snape's office? So I continued in that direction, and when I got to the last corner I hid there, invisible but knowing there were other ways that people could find me, and peaked my head around…

The door was ajar, an immediate sign something was wrong, and a shifting, tintinnabular noise like glass preservation bottles being moved echoed down the cold and dank hall. My skin was still warm from my bath-with-egg, but my hair was already uncomfortably plastered to my face and neck, the cold droplets creating veins of goose bumps as they travelled down my rosy skin. Slowly, checking the map and finding no one else in immediate proximity, I inched around the corner and to the open door. My own steps were the ones of slippers on stone, liquid and daring, but practised from years of sneaking in castles and middle-class prisons.

It opened towards me, the heavy oaken door, allowing a breath of space between it and the wall for me to hide uselessly behind, invisible and unseeable in the deep shadow there. I palmed my wand from my waistband and set down my bag, acutely aware of the deep veins of the dark-stained wood, the black iron of the wide hinges, so like a prison door… There was the familiar scent of mint hanging about in the room, darkened by the heavier smells of viler things from the supply cabinet within, of vinegar and preservatives, and of a man who did not belong in a place so completely Snape that it as heinous to imagine another within that cloud of scents.

My bag clanked as I set it down, the egg hitting the stone more solidly than I'd hoped as I tried to make my way around the half-open door-

-which slammed against me, pushing me and my tenderized head against the stone wall behind it as the intruder, hearing the noise, pushed the door farther open. I cannot see his face, nor any feature about him as my eyes stream with blackness in all its shapes and forms, only a figure running away. As I tumble onto the ground, my bag jostles the wrong way, and the egg within cracks open to sing its unintelligible song…

I come to my senses several minutes later, black spots moving erratically in front of my eyes. Blinking them away, but finding even when I close my eyes they remain, I shut the egg, my hand frantically searching for what I cannot see. It is too late, though, for as my ears readjust to the pervading silence of the Potions corridor, they catch a noise endemic to this hall: the soft whisper of cloth that is Snape come.

He sees the door is open and dark within and draws his wand. It lights without a word from him, and serves to light for me the billowing of his robes as he moved towards me – and the door. Perhaps he would not have entered a room with a possible intruder inside, or maybe he catches a glimpse of dressing gown or bag that has slipped out from underneath my cloak, but he stops less than a yard from where I have managed to sit up and sniffs. Slowly (for my own benefit; my pulse thuds all the louder as my muscles try the movement), I raise my hands and push the hood back from my face.

What emotions play across his features as he takes me in, apparently a floating head floating near ground level, eyes unable to concentrate on their own, damp hair clinging to skin still bath-warm? I cannot see, so I do not know, but I doubt they are many, if any show at all. "It's not what you think," I manage and, pushing my cloak off entirely, struggle to my fuzzy slippered feet.

If his face didn't show any emotion, his voice betrayed him, a level concern in the simple way he said my name – "Éléonore?" – enough to focus bleary eyes towards, what I assumed, was him. "What happened here?"

I think my explanation of, "I was taking my egg for a bath," worried him, so I was drawn inside and placed once more on that soft, well-loved couch (with faded green threads and still-sparkling silver edging, I now see, very Slytherin in style but comfortable in a way I suppose old Slytherins are after they've made kings and started wars, sitting around at class reunions with snifters of brandy, comparing their rumourmongerings and bedevilments. Solid, yes, but a little more malleable than you'd otherwise expect) with that selfsame blanket wrapped around me while Snape went to examine the damage made of his stores.

"I didn't do it," I offer again, the last spots flitting away as he lights the torches.

"Even a thief as inept as Longbottom couldn't manage to concuss himself on the way out." I somehow doubt this. If I'm lucky for staying alive as long as I have, Neville's as equally unlucky for all the scrapes, bumps, burnt cauldrons, and misplaced eyebrows he seems to receive. "Would you care to explain to me what has occurred here?"

I find myself explaining the necessary bathing of my egg and my returning to the tower when I, er, noticed something going and came to investigate. He seemed amused at my inept spy-work, not as if it were something entertaining in and of itself, but because it reminded him of something in those years of the war, something that had been a bright spot then. I wondered, briefly, as I yawned, how long it had been since he'd truly laughed. The Potions Master cleaned his store room, vanishing broken glass and spilled preservatives as necessary.

"Why do you think it was Barty Crouch?" he asked, almost absent-mindedly as he worked – almost, because the name came out sharp and cutting, though for no reason I could see why. Crouch was the type of man I could easily see annoying many people, so I took it in my stupor to be reasonable.

Dad and Sirius will kill me if they ever find out I ended up telling him about the map. He examined it, another of those amused, not-quite-smiles on his face while the gears behind his dark eyes spun and made connections I daren't guess at, only that he probably knew who the Marauders were a lot more then I did when I first got the map a year ago.

I was yawning heavily by this point – and entertaining thoughts of expressing my happiness that weren't quite appropriate for what I wanted to thank Diggory for – and warm, and blanket covered when Snape got up from his examination of the map and poked his head in the now clean storeroom. "I could have sworn I smelled something…" his voice trailed, searching for that illusive broken container that could let rot run rampant through his storeroom.

I sniff too, leaning back from the map spread across my legs. It is gardenia. I turn a little redder in embarrassment. "Oh, yeah, that's me," I tell him at last, which causes a true ghost of a smile as he closes the storeroom door behind him and comes to straddle the chair he's moved beside me. He is very close to me, smelling very nicely of mint and musk, eyes intent on the miraculous map my father and his friends created, and I believe I can see a hint of what might be causal clothes beneath partially-unbuttoned robes as I drift off, wondering if he knows a potion that can help me breathe underwater…

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

I'm not sure which is more awkward, sneaking back into your dorm room in formal clothes you've slept in after a ball or sneaking back into your dorm room in pyjamas and bath robe after you've clearly showered elsewhere. You'd think I'd know by this point, but I really don't. I think I'll go with the second one, 'cause even though my hair's still not quite dry, Snape managed to wake me up after an hour or so of staring at my wholly remarkable map, so no one's likely to be up this time.

"You should get back to the tower, Éléonore," he tells me as he shakes me awake. I start for a moment feeling the male hand on my shoulder, my magic preparing to unleash itself, before I realize who it is touching me.

I sit up, embarrassed and tired, momentarily pondering why that icy sliver of fear coursed through me in that brief instant. I can't recall the last time I was shaken awake by anyone, let alone a man. My cheeks flare red. I nod and take my map, preparing to go.

"I hated to wake you," he admits, this man I have inadvertently thrown with by the shared fate of a name in a newspaper article, "but you were beginning to thrash again."

Again. That implied I'd trashed previously. Which means I'd a nightmare. It wasn't a bad one of there wasn't any screaming. I can't recall any details beyond a dark, endless room filled with high, narrow shelves and inhuman laughter. I shrug at him and shoulder my bag.

"What do you dream about that frightens you so much?"

I turn from the door I am about to open and look at him, my mouth cottony, eyelids heavy with sleep. I look at him, and he looks away quickly, understanding, the momentary tension beading on my clammy skin.

It is easier to make it up to the Tower unseen in dead of night with a cloak and map like mine, even if the egg in my bag is an unwelcome inconvenience. At least now I know the clue. In, oh, a month's time I'm expected to learn to swim, breathe underwater, and fight merpeople for possession of something that will apparently blacken after an hour. Yeah, no problem at all with that.

I'm itching to tell Hermione about what happened tonight, about Crouch in Snape's office, but I can't think of a way to tell her without telling her I've crashed on a Slytherin-themed couch in said office again. I suppose I'll have to settle for it gnawing away at me alone.

The number of things I can't tell my oldest friends is growing deeper and deeper with each passing day, and I don't know what glue can heal the chasm separating us. But, as much as I want to forgive Ron for being so cruel to me, the fissure still exists between us, and would continue to do so if he could forgive me for being sleepy in the wrong place. And Hermione just would analyse my desire to go to the office even before I knew a crime was being committed as, I dunno, co-dependent or something, which is not an appealing way of spending time. Merlin, if I were to tell her how nice Snape smells when he's real close, even if he's just examining your father's map, and every nerve is on fire, trying to leap across the distance between you, not because you have anything like feelings for the man – no, Merlin, no – but because you've never been so close to a guy who you could have feelings for if you wanted to… Yes, if I told Hermione that, she'd tell me… I dunno, maybe my desire to have a parental unit in my life has translated with the onset of puberty to the desire to have an authoritarian figure in the shape of a lover in my life.

I've been spending too much time with Hermione. I mean, he's a professor, hello. Can't I just say he smells good?

I thought not.

At least I can sneak into bed without a fight this time. Fights are so exhausting, worse so then battling dragons… You know where you stand with dragons… with people, you can never know if they love you or want to see you dead… A dragon can only kill you. A person can make you wish you were dead…

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

When I wake up again, it's morning and time for, yeah, History of Magic (I'm currently using this time to read through the law books Remus sent me; hopefully he'll buy be a law firm soon; if news that I spent part of last night in Snape's office again gets out, my spin-control options may soon be limited. Besides, I need to add Draco to my list of people to sue, and, if that list gets much longer, I doubt I'll live to see the completion of all the trials. I have discovered, though, various ways that I can keep myself from being conscripted in the Muggle armed forces should the draft be instated), Charms (not so bad), and (drum-roll) Potions! What a happy, wonderful day.

I'm still filled with the bubbly joy of yesterday, but it's rather more contained now. Which is a pity, because jumping Diggory could be fun in its own way – better then History of Magic anyway.

I must not think thoughts like that. He is happily dating someone at the moment. If I must jump someone, I should jump a single someone. Since none of the guys, not even Diggory, interest me enough to consider it, I'm left at square one, which, frankly, leaves me with Fleur and the S's for company at the next Hogsmeade weekend…

I wonder if I even own a swimsuit. Unless Fleur snuck one into the hordes of clothes I purchased that one time, I am pretty sure I don't. I'm going to have to rectify that somehow. Maybe someone on Diagon Ally owl-orders swimsuits during the middle of January?

I'm sitting between the dark-haired S and the fake red-head (I'm relatively sure that one's Sylvie) and eating my breakfast calmly, not blasting anyone with Banishing Charms today, when McGonagall comes up to me and asks me to meet her in her office after I'm done eating. Though I agree (what do you say, anyway? "Oh, no professor? Mars is in the seventh house and means that green-eyed Leos like myself should stay as far away from cats and people who turn into cats this week?" and, even if that would work, you'd only be able to use that excuse once), my mind works furiously to figure out why she might one to see me.

. She's found out I'm the one behind the tapioca in Filch's office. I hope not, because Dobby wasn't supposed to deliver it until The Twins get their next detentions.

. I've failed my cross-species transfiguration test. I'm pretty sure I haven't, as I managed to change the Guinea Pig into the Guinea Fowl, but you never know.

. She wants to offer me advice on how to breathe underwater, something all grandmother-y figures do for their grandchild-y figures at some point in their lives.

. She found out about last night and I'm about to be in huge, nova-sized trouble.

I'm thinking option four myself.

So, after eating, I head up to McGonagall's office, which is almost as austere as Snape's levels below. However, whereas his gives off the feeling of being closed in, embraced by the stone walls, hers benefits from being several floors higher, with many tall, narrow windows with that diamond-shaped glass you see in old buildings and a large, almost kitchen-y fireplace opposite her desk. The rug was crimson, the walls accentuated by moving black-and-white pictures of graduating classes and cup teams, an occasional pennant hanging between the frames. A tin of biscuits sits on the corner of her desk; there is probably another tartan tin in a drawer underneath.

I do not sit in one of the straight backed, Quaker chairs. I instead look for Mum and the Marauders in the pictures. Dad's team won the cup three years in a row – '76, '77, and '78. I never knew that. I have his build and his hair, people are always telling me, but my eyes are Mum's and so are any other graces I might have inherited. They were very brave, and loved each other very much. Dad died first, telling Mum to take me and run, but Mum loved him too and could not leave, even if she could've, even to save me, and died in an exchange her murderer never meant to honour. I do not know if they were religious or not, traditional or nonconformist, morning birds or night owls, but I do know those few things.

These things are gems and precious to me. They give me a history that my name and fame cannot tell me.

She walks in, as sober as this room, tight-knit and in control. I can see Hermione in her place fifty years from now, hair in that selfsame bun, a few less pieces Quidditch memorabilia on the walls, but essentially the same. I can see the young Hermione McGonagall must have been, bushy haired and ever eager to learn. It is a comforting simile. I wonder how long this cycle has gone on.

Without prelude, "Severus tells me you've been spending quite a bit of time together." Her brogue is comforting, if the words somewhat accusatory. I bask in the familiarity of it all. How many times have I landed myself in here for detention? How many more times will there be?

"Someone needs to clean all those cauldrons every night. He'll just create a detention for someone so he doesn't have to do it. I enjoy cleaning. It's mutually beneficial."

"As pleased as I am to see you two finally starting to understand one another, don't you think you have been taking it… a bit extreme?"

Snape told her. I don't know why, but he did. "If I'm not in bed by midnight, I turn into a pumpkin. I just so happened to do so in his vicinity." If he didn't like me hanging around, why hadn't he, in character, said something to my face?

"Twice."

"Twice," I agreed. It's not like I'm propositioning the man (seriously) or anything. I fail to see what her problem with it all is, nor why Snape would want her to know.

She seemed… I suppose happy is the closest word, or maybe relieved, or even smug at this, but I do not know why. I can only assume there is something she's not telling me. There is much I think she knows and does not tell me. I even think she knew about my Dad and them being animagi that whole time, but didn't say anything for Remus's sake sometimes. "See to it you're in your own bed at midnight from now on, will you?" It is a dismissal if I know one. But I also know she doesn't have a class this period on Fridays and I'm only missing the chapter on marriage contracts in Ye Olde Youth Law textbook.

I dared. "Professor? Did you know my parents?"

I know she did. She had to. But she can back out if she chose with that question. It is safe… "Yes."

"Can you tell me about them?" Another strange look took hold of her, this one motherly and wizened.

She dove right in. The Potters were of Calais, which, along with Nord-Pas-de-Calais proper and Aquitaine in the south are still under the control of the English Ministry of Magic, as they have been since the 1300s, but as English as it was possible to be. As many generations of Potters and their forbearers had attended Hogwarts for as long as there had been a Hogwarts to attend, though Potter men had a tendency to marry French-born witches. My grandfather's name was Henri-Gabriel, and he was the Gryffindor Head Boy some years before McGonagall came to Hogwarts. He married a Franco-Italian, Alexandrie Morietti, and their only child was my father, Jacques-Henri. Everyone, including his parents, anglicized his name for everyday usage. "We always called your grandfather Gabe," she recalled. She seems fond of those early days.

Jacques-Henri, called simply James, was an attention-seeker, a little spoiled, charismatic, great on a broom; a good student if a bit of a trouble-maker. He loved my mother at first sight, and spent his life convincing her she loved him too.

Lilly Margaret Evans was a Muggle-born with the same understandable hatred of wizarding "backwardness" as Hermione, but a heart compassionate enough to moderate the difference. She was beautiful and a good hand in most things but had no head for numbers, but scraped an E in her Arithmancy NEWT through sheer willpower alone. She refused to lift off the ground when they taught First Years how to fly. She spoke fluent French and was disgusted when she discovered James, who lived in what Muggles construed as France, could barely string together a sentence, though that too changed over time.

Everybody loved them, or, at least, everybody who mattered. They married a month out of school. She was training to be a Mind Healer. He was part of the Muggle-Worth Excuse Committee at the Ministry during the day, a vigilante for the Light whenever he had a free moment to fight injustice. "He spent all his time at Hogwarts giving his professors excuses for this, that, and the other thing. It's only fitting he went on to do it professionally." Ironically, he'd suggested a gas leak as an excuse for another of Voldemort's attacks a month before they went into hiding, and the idea stayed on file until November 1, 1981, when they gave it to the Muggle press to cover up Wormtail's murder of twelve people and subsequent escape, all of which they blamed on Sirius, their best friend.

These are more details then I have ever known about past, and I drink it in eagerly, but sadly too. These are people I will never know. They are just names to me, halves and quarters of blood whose secrets remain unlockable. I can assume that my great-grandfather was named Gabriel-something, based off the small pattern I've found in three names, but I could be wrong. There could be no pattern at all.

She only stops when her class is due to start, a group of First Year Slytherins and Hufflepuffs, and she shoos me off to Charms. No one notices my distraction at a spell I did quite well at last week. I wonder if anyone notices anything about me, ever, when my name isn't I the paper against my will or there's a rumour making its way about with my name attached.

Potions is different. He notices right away, my aura, or some Divination bunk like that, tasting of tears-held-back and sorrows-best-forgotten. I chop and dice and slice accordingly, but my hearts not in it. If he'd thought to insult me, I don't think I would even notice, what with the state I'm in. I'm operating on autopilot and no one but he can see it. Hermione, who gives the orders to chop and dice, to slice and grate, seems happier I'm doing everything without nagging her as she stirs and adjusts temperatures and feeds the flames. I don't even know what we made today. We might have carried on a conversation and I'd never have noticed.

Everyone rushes out for dinner after the indeterminable time of forever is over, but I move slowly. I pack my bag. I clear my desk of excess supplies. I take my cauldron over to the sinks to be washed. I pick up a sponge and start in on them, not caring that I've not eaten since this morning – I've gone longer without – and thinking over again everything McGonagall told me:

I am Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Potter, daughter of Lily Margaret Evans and Jacques-Henri Alexandre Gérald Potter of Calais, he himself the son of Alexandrie Lorriane Moretti and Henri-Gabriel Philippe Potter, also of Calais, where the Potters have resided, apparently since the Battle of Hastings, though not always under that name. I am Alexandrie-Margaux for my paternal and maternal grandmothers in turn. I am Henriette for my father and paternal grandfather. I am Éléonore for no one but myself – that I know of – and that is the name I was meant to be called.

I am Éléonore, The Girl-Who-Lived, and I have a history now.

It overwhelms me. I barely notice that he has not left the room. He is concerned. It is a palpable undercurrent to my worries. Witches rarely randomly start cleaning cauldrons in his classrooms when they could be eating or, in general, not in his classroom. Not even the Slytherins. He doesn't know what to do. It bothers him more than it ought.

"Do you have a problem with me being here?" I ask suddenly, my voice a dull monotone. I am rough and unfinished today. He will not care if I don't pretend otherwise.

"No." He is lonely too. I can feel that in the air around us. I wonder if we'll ever have a conversation where I'm not cleaning or not asleep on his couch.

"Why did you tell McGonagall about me being here last night then?"

His words surprise me. "So they don't forbid you from coming." He likes my company as much as I, for some reason, like his.

I will, at some point, have to ask him if he knows how to breathe underwater.


	7. In Which I Am Forced to Wear Swimwear

The only good thing I can possibly see of this situation is that it's not a bikini.

It is, however, designer. Apparently only Italian clothiers are willing to owl bathing costumes to boarding schools in February to champions now being forced to don them against their will. While it is spelled to keep me from catching hypothermia while swimming in winter, to never rip, tear, or come undone at the seams, and, supposedly, one of the most modest bathing costumes Greco and Mancini makes, it is still a swimsuit. One that I am being forced to parade around in before the whole school, never mind that I'll be underwater for most the time.

Oh, and did I mention, while only one piece, it exposes nearly all of my back? How I'm not supposed to catch hypothermia in a getup like this, I don't know, but it's not like I have any other options.

I have spent the last month fretting about this actually. I have looked through nearly every book in the Hogwarts library that might have a spell or potion that will allow slips of fourteen year old witches to breathe underwater, even giving Hermione and (reluctantly) Ron an abbreviated version of my discovery of what the next task is so that they can help me discover whatever it is I'd be willing to risk swimsuit humiliation to recover. But there is nothing in the library to help me with this unusual request, and there is nothing, nothing at all.

The night before last I give in to my desires. I am scrubbing cauldrons again – where I have been every night for this past month, more or less, of my own free will – and getting quite good at identifying what might blow up in my face if I put hot water in it and what might merely turn me green with something other then nerves.

There has been a strange tension since that last night I fell asleep in his office. It is not awkward, or even, dare I say it, sexual, no, it is only a tension borne of silence, however comfortable, and the words that we do not know we want to speak.

Our conversations are usually one of us questioning, the other of us answering. They are sparse and often started seemingly out of no where after a long period of silence from both of us.

He asked me what I knew of the map's creation one day.

I asked him why he became a Potions Master.

He wanted to know why people still call me Harry, and how I came to get that name.

I asked how many points he'd taken away from Slytherin upon hearing their innuendos after Rita Skeeter's article first appeared.

Most recently he asked me why I had cursed Malfoy in the great hall that day. "It wasn't really what he was saying – he's said worse things to me then offering a 'legal concubinage,' – but what he said before then. About me being a charity case," I told him.

"The Potter Fortune is quite large and quite singularly yours." He says this without bitterness; I suppose it was not money he and my father fought over. I do wonder, though, what else he knows about me that I do not.

It is the fear of an orphan that comes out in my response. "It's not about money either. It's more… the acquisition that someone would only want me – whatever the reason – because I'm, apparently, rich." It is the fear that my only value is the money I can offer. That I am not worth knowing in my own right. That I am a known entity – rich and famous and able to clean and cook without setting the house afire – kept only as ornament, a hedge fund for someone else's future. It is my fear that Ron only forgives me for my (his words, not mine) gross mistakes because of this. It is my fear (nay, knowledge) that Azkaban South is in some way enriched this way because of my presence. It is the fear that most, if not all, connections I make will be tainted by the desire for the girl who won Teen Witch's Most Influential Teen Star award three times in a row (and came in second place in the annual Most Eligible Bachelorette contest in this month's Star and Stave magazine, behind forty-three-year old Ara Antila, lead singer of the popular wizarding band, The Weird Sisters, who recently divorced from the band's bass player, Eugene Delphinis). It is my fear that the world wants me to be their heroine: a sporty, moderately intelligent girl dedicated to the Light and to justice, who will marry a couple years out of school a well-known Quidditch Star or member of a rock band, have two beautiful children, and somehow manage to take care of them while balancing my high-profile job and busy social life.

I don't want that life. I want to graduate and disappear into the shadows, coming forward only when my presence makes a difference. Maybe fade into a position in a wizarding law firm, where I can maybe keep the Ministry from perpetrating more crimes, like what they did to Sirius…

"You are many things, Éléonore," he assures me at the end of that conversation, "but you are not the type of person who can fade quietly into the shadows. No, when you leave the limelight, you shall take part of it with you and illuminate the night."

That was our conversation on Saturday night. I've thought long about it. He is probably right: as unhappy as I can be with the press, I wouldn't get to sue people as often if I was quietly hidden away in Potter Manor (if there was one) knitting or something. I'd have to learn how to knit first, but I'm sure Mrs. Weasley wouldn't mind teaching me if I had the sudden inclination to spend my time in a rocking chair with blunt needles in my hand.

Oh, yes, that reminds me, Remus owled me Monday morning. He said he's found someone that should do, but that it's not quite what I asked for. No idea what that means, but he wants to meet me in Hogsmeade as soon as possible, so you can guess what I'm doing on Saturday. Yes, there's a proper weekend the Saturday after, but things like lawsuits and annoying journalists can't wait even that long.

So, anyway, back to Monday night. You can't really blame me though – I had only one full day and the remainder of the night to figure out how to breathe underwater, a fact which, considering I'd have to be under said water by Wednesday, I very much had a stake figuring out. I was prepared to be as shameless as possible. I was dressed out, low-riding pants and tight sweater and everything. I needed an answer, or else face drowning. Spell, potion, whatever – I needed by Wednesday and was otherwise out of options. Desperation, I've been told, is one of my more interesting moods. It has driven me to kill a man Voldemort was using as a mouthpiece, however unintentionally at first; it has caused me to go into Basilisk-ridden chambers and face men I then thought worse then Judas, because it was my parents he betrayed.

I have outwitted a dragon. I will not allow myself to drown. I don't deserve to die like that. Not in a game.

Hermione catches me on my way down. She is playing chess with Ron, though I don't know why anyone bothers anymore. I suspect it is her own way of getting our oblivious friend to notice her in some light. Maybe she thinks if she plays him often enough, he'll look up from the board and see her in the light I think she wants him to see her in. I do not know, only that, if that is her plan, it's not going too well. Ron is Ron – a fourteen, almost fifteen year old boy, and, by definition, boys are dense. Not worth paying any attention to at all at this stage. I mean, he thinks dungbombs are funny. What's so funny about one of those? I rather hope she turns her attentions to Krum instead. He's at least interesting, and interested in her. I say this not just 'cause I'm still a little angry at him. He's too engrossed in the game to notice me, at least. No doubt he'd have an opinion on my… civvies… At least, just this once, that opinion is the one I'm aiming for. "Harry," she calls me over. She, like most, would not call me Éléonore even if I asked. I am Harry to them, and will always be Harry the Heroine in their eyes.

"How's it going?" I ask to be polite. Frankly, at this moment I wouldn't care if she told me she'd discovered the thirteenth use of dragon's blood, unless it helped me to breathe water.

"I'm currently trying to discern which chess master Ron was in a previous life."

"That well, then?"

"Yeah." She looked morosely at the board, moved a bishop, and turned back to me. Her eyes were ringed with shadows. She'd probably been spending her nights searching for ways for me to survive this next task as I had, though without the annoying habit of falling asleep in the middle of a page. I decided, heroine that I am, to help her out.

"So," my voice casual. I am good at faking casual. "How are things going with you and Victor?"

Before she can get a full word in, "What?" Ron, predictably, rages, "You're not still seeing him, are you?"

Hey, it's attention, right?

Okay, so that plan at least needs a little work. I've only so much energy to devote to everything going on around me and, frankly, Ron and Hermione fall at about five on my list. Nevertheless, it allows me to sneak out of the common room unnoticed by the two most likely to take note of it. I do run across The Twins on their way to another detention, one they seem to have gotten for the large amount of pudding that was discovered in a certain caretaker's office. They are much amused by what they assume is my sneaky sneakiness and only slightly interested in my destination.

As Twin A whistles, Twin B asks, "Off to see the beau?" waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

"I still don't understand how she could pass us up for an old man, Fred."

"Nor do I. She's more then enough woman to handle both of us, don't you think?"

"Yes, she'd not have to worry about that."

"Not at all, George, not at all."

"There'd always be one of us there to be dragged to high society functions-"

"-or yell at when we've not put the lid down-"

"-or forgotten to buy milk while the other of kips off to the pub for a pint-"

"-or we could do Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays-"

"-alternate Saturdays, if you'd prefer, or maybe every other week-"

"-or hour. We're not picky."

A blow them a kiss as I walk away, laughing. They fight with each other to catch it and then, one of them apparently having won, walk off to do their own mischief. The Twins are great. I don't know if I'd mentioned this, but right after the rumours about Snape and me got started, before the tournament and all, but they came up to me and asked if they could be pencilled in – together – whenever I was free. They had the gall to do this while I was drinking, and wound up sopping as I coughed the water out of my lungs.

I arrived at Snape's classroom at last, a little later then usual. He's sitting behind his desk, grading papers with his sharp-tongued quill.

"You're late," he said without looking up, as if we'd an appointment or something.

Walking to his desk, "Fred and George held me up," I explained. That tingly feeling of anxiety comes to life again, and I could have sworn that my nerve-endings were trying to cross the distance between me and him by willpower alone.

"This wouldn't have anything to do with the large amount of tapioca Argus found in his office this morning, would it?"

"Perhaps," I concede, now right before him, separated by only the desk laden with papers and potions journals. I can smell him now, mint clouded by the particular mixture of ingredients he has prepared today. I don't know why such a simple thing as that has such a strong draw for me – magnetic, almost hypnotic, making me shiver as I take it in. I can see myself falling for the man, if he'd let me. It'd be so easy… just reach out my hand across the short-enough distance of the desk to touch his right hand, playing with the ink bottle's cork as the left makes lines across the unfortunate student's paper… I imagine it would be calloused from years of stirring potions, and scarred from injudicious knife-cuts and battles in the war alike, and somewhat leathery…

I am starting to believe what Rita Skeeter is writing about my own life now, this is just great! I refuse to complicate my life further and take that path, the one my hand suddenly wants to make. I do not need that. I do not want that. It is but a fantasy of my mint-riddled mind. It will pass in time.

"Might I ask what your obsession with that particular pudding may be?"

I shrug, and he looks up from his papers. His lips are already starting to move to say something, but the breath never makes it that far. I might even have seen him swallow the words in a quick movement before he continued elegantly, as if nothing ever happened, but I'm not prideful enough to actually admit that happened outside of my own overactive imagination. "Is there something you wanted, Miss Potter?"

It's been ages since he called me "Miss Potter" in private. Almost a month, in fact. Éléonore is defence mechanism, trying to rebuild that barrier he himself has helped to tear down between us. "Actually…" his eyebrow raises, a questioning movement, but enough to make my heart flutter a bit. I really must get this stupid thing out of my head, these thoughts implanted there by some madness yet unknown to wizarding kind! He's my professor, for Merlin's sake. He's twenty years older than me. He still hates my father and I am nothing if not my father's daughter, my godfather's goddaughter. I am Gryffindor – everything he hates in the world – and as Gryffindor as it is possible to be.

Only, a true Gryffindor would have stolen whatever she needed from his storerooms. It is a Slytherin trait, this, what do I call it, seduction? A Gryffindor would never have come back after that last detention, or let the man fix her hobbled feet.

And I explain to him that, despite my best efforts, I have no way to breathe underwater. After a moment, I remember to tell him why I need to do so, and my request makes a bit more sense.

"We cannot have our fearless hero drown," he says after a moment, and returns with this strange looking tangle called gillyweed. I didn't think it would be that easy and it showed. I think I was almost looking forward to having to flirt with Snape, as odd as that is. We stay in silence the rest of the night.

I can feel the gills sprouting on my neck, the webbing growing between my fingers. I take a deep breath, but I may as well be breathing sulphur for all the good its doing me as I stand here, chewing this worm-like weed in my low-backed swimsuit in front of the whole school (which, one should know, includes the professors as well as the student body, but whereas the students are across the lake, the professors are gathered nearby and slightly behind, afforded a full view, if any cared to look, at my bare back). I throw myself into the water…

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

…and Grindylows were not supposed to be this aggressive. I was struggling to the surface, both arms uselessly pulling Ron and Gabrielle along behind me, my legs kicking as fast as they could toward the brilliant glow of light. My anti-tear swimsuit has several gashes along my stomach, and I can feel the burning of four parallel claw marks on my shoulders and legs, one even going down my bare back. The red tint of the water around me would have given away that they'd broken my skin even before I could taste the metallic blood in the water coming in my gills.

Ron and Fleur's sister are useless in this fight, vulnerable even, and for some reason the creatures are still perusing us, and I can not do anything like this. Mustering my strength (and Merlin knows what they were thinking, making me compete), I push first Gabrielle and then Ron upwards with all my might, hoping they'll reach the surface soon – the light's glittering so closely now, and I can easily make out the piscine features of the Grindylows, their yellowed teeth shining malevolently as I turn in the water to face them. There are three, one with a makeshift trident in his hand.

I slide my wand out of the strap I have fastened around my arm and into my hand, shouting, "Relasio," as I flip open the knife Sirius sent me for Christmas in my left. A bubble of sound escapes my mouth and a burst of super-heated water scalds the nearest but otherwise does little damage. "Confringo!" I try again at the first, making a circular motion with my want as I kick away a second, who latches his long, spindly fingers around my ankle and tries to pull me back into the darkness when I fail.

The usual isn't working, and I'm not in the mood to die today. I spell to kill. Taking aim at the head of the one latched onto me (which is quite hard, as it is getting harder to breathe and, therefore, not panic and shoot my own leg off) I shout, "Deprimo!" and the creature's head explodes in a burst of red-tinged water and gore. Its arms are still wrapped around my leg, even as the rest of it floats into the drink, but a kick easily loosens them even before the bile has reached my throat. I dry heave, but take a swipe with the knife at another, one who clearly hasn't been deterred by the rough dissembling of his compatriot.

"Expulso! Reducto!" I struggled to think of spells in the fog of my mind, "Reducto!" I felt the knife collide with the arm of one attacker, drawing blood, as my Reductor Curse struck the third, propelling him in a wave of water away. The Grindylow claws for my knife, trying to knock it away from me and ease his attack, but, with one last, "Expulso!" I learned the sound that ribs make when cracking underwater.

I don't know how I make it to the surface, breaking into life-giving air seemingly forever after the gillyweed has worn off, panting as I struggle to tread water, inwardly cursing the wardens of Azkaban South for never teaching me how to swim, or even allowing me near a body of water larger than their small bath. The noises are surreal, and the February air blowing over the water chill despite my overpriced Greco and Mancini suit's assurances that I will not die of hypothermia while in it.

Somehow I don't think they actually thought I might actually ever need the spell, or, apparently, the anti-tear charm.

Turned about hopelessly, I search for Ron and Gabrielle, for shore, but quickly feel a spell catch me and tractor me in. Thank Merlin. I don't think I could have made it farther then an inch. Warm, dry hands pull me out of the water, exclaiming over the state of me. I could hear Fleur fussing in the background, going into one of her Veela moods. "It was ze grindylows… zey attacked me… oh Gabrielle, I thought… I thought…"

"Merlin's beard, Miss Potter," Madam Pomprey comes up to me and begins applying purple potions that steam and sting to my wounds without as much as a warning. I really hate her sometimes, "What happened to you?"

A towel was draped around my neck, but most of me and what remained of my swimsuit, which had once been the same pale gold of my dress robes, by necessity was uncovered, and I shivered in the cold. Why, I truly wonder, couldn't they have had this task when it was, I dunno, warm? Some kind soul must have seen my plight and cast a localized warming spell on the part of the dock where I was being treated. Before I could answer the mediwitch, though, the caster of the spell was kneeling down beside me and, taking my more injured arm in hand, turned it around to better view my wounds. "Grindylows," Professor Snape pronounced, correctly of course, "same as Miss Delacour. Oddly active for this time of year."

My arm, still being examined by Snape, feels on fire. In a good way. Every nerve is singing with excitement, and I try telling myself that it's only the oxygen-deprivation talking this time. Why do I always seem to be injured or sleepy every time something as admittedly exciting as this happens?

Gently, I pull it from his grasp and use it to brush strands of my very wet hair from my face. I catch a piece of Grindylow brain between my fingers in the process. I about spew. A few blood restoratives are forced down my throat as the healer and the Potions Master tend my injuries, and I mostly sit there in shock… "The first one's head… it just exploded. Like a balloon," I mutter to no one in particular. A hand on my swimsuit-strapped shoulder gently restrains me, and I notice that I'm swaying a little as I sit there. "The second… I managed to force it away for long enough… the third though… it was such a loud crack, like it was my bones…" Someone is murmuring platitudes quietly, or something I take to be platitudes, as they work on me, and the sound of the voice comforts me in a way I'm not prepared to admit.

I sit there for a long time. Fleur comes up to thank me for saving Gabrielle, whom I remind her of, but I barely hear what she says. Other people are talking around me. Scores are announced. I don't know what I got. They want to take me to the hospital wing, but I won't let them. I just need to be somewhere quiet, where I can't think…

I find myself in his office again, the blanket wrapped around me on the soft couch, but in the middle of the morning this time. A cup of peppermint tea is placed in my hands, but I do not drink it. I just stare into it for a long while.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

I took three showers that night, when I finally was able to face the common room. I don't know why the grindylows' deaths affect me more then, say, Quirell's did, but it does. There is something about the murder of two creatures that were, in all likelihood, only protecting their homes and acting on pure, animal instinct and the murder of a man who is trying to do the same to you. A major difference. Especially when its brains are lodged in your hair…

It has worn off, though, by the time I make my way to the Shrieking Shack to meet its former inhabitant. "Remus," I shout as I pull off the cloak, and throw myself into his arms. Like a movie, he spins to discharge the momentum of my leap, and I bury my face in his chest. I don't know how much I've missed him. He is not just a tangible connection to the history that is starting to unfurl behind me, he is a friend.

"Éléonore," he responds, amused and not a little flattered by my reaction. "Good to see you, cub."

"You don't know how happy I am to see you," I gush, telling him all about the Grindylows, still face still in his shoulder as he gives me a hug that does nothing like what Snape's touch can do to me, and I can almost see the sheepish expression on his face grow the longer I stay there.

"You do know there's someone else here?" he comments at last, and I jump back from him like I've been burned. It's Sirius, quietly chuckling at the werewolf's predicament, and so I launch in on him too. He is warm and comfortable, a mix between wet-dog and cinnamon in smell, and I lean on him as we sit on the floor to discuss what has really brought us here: legal matters.

There are some comments on how the law must excite me, in terms that take me a moment to translate into common English before I turn a deep red, before we get down to business. The fact is he's found a reputable firm willing to take my case(s) – the firm of Dunn, Hastings, and McGully – but there seems to be no way around the fact that, to secure such legal representation, I must be a legal adult or have my guardian's permission. The law also has it that the earliest I can even become an emancipated minor is sixteen, which helps me very little at the moment, especially as the day Petunia lets me retain a law firm will be the day… no, I can't think of anything spectacular enough to cover it. So, in a bizarre and singularly legal frame of mind, the firm will not represent me, per se, but rather carry out these acts for me in my godfather's name. How an escaped convict can be allowed to buy a law firm, I don't know, but it gets the job done, so it works for me.

The only thing actually left to do is figure out which of us wants to pay them (Sirius ends up winning that argument, and says it's my birthday present. How many girls, honestly, get law firms for their birthdays? This is why I have neuroses, I swear) and where we want them to begin. Skeeter and the Prophet are most pressing, but Sirius's case is also on the docket, after which he can legally gain custody of me as my parents wanted, as well as something Sirius insists on, which is charging the MoM with gross negligence for allowing, nay, forcing a fourteen-year-old witch to participate in the Triwizard Tournament. Remus is to be the go-between for Sirius and the firm.

The news breaks next Friday in the paper:

Black Claims Innocence!

Ministry Cover-Up?

and

Reporter Rita Skeeter Under Investigation

In Potter/Snape Defamation Case

with appropriately outraged articles and, I'm saddened to say, I don't think I've ever been so happy as seeing those words in print. Even if it was the awkward, mind-numbing print of the Daily Prophet.

The next two months pass slowly, my Grindylow wounds healing nicely, my nights being spent primarily in Snape's company. To my displeasure, the warm fuzzies failed to dissipate with time, and rather grew to be a comfortable, common feeling I had every time we spent these bizarre hours together, me cleaning the revolving mess of his classroom, and he doing those things a professor must do to stay gainfully employed.

He asked me, once, how often I had the nightmares that left dark circles under my eyes.

I asked, in turn, about the Snape's of Kent (there weren't any but him) and his childhood (which he refused to talk about, and so I guessed was similar to my own).

He asked how I managed to hire a law firm.

I asked why he wanted to be a teacher.

One day he even asked why I liked cleaning his cauldrons so much (I explained as best I could, and he seemed to understand) and about my guardians ("Unpleasant," was my only answer to that question, which even he didn't need to know the answer to).

I asked why he became a spy for the Light, but he never did answer that.

We found ourselves talking at times you wouldn't expect, when he didn't have to be there because he had no papers to grade or articles to read, and he could have been elsewhere innovating new potions or whatever he did for fun. I started bringing my homework with me when I came, so I had an excuse to stay when I was done. Sometimes these other talks were his rants on the incompetence of his students, myself included, and sometimes got as heated as our old arguments, B.D. (Before that Detention), were. I'd go on about the things I discovered were going on behind my back – I'd taken out a subscription to the Star and Stave and found out during these months that I supposedly have aspirations to join the Holyhead Harpies and am dating the twenty-seven-year-old lead singer of the Haz-Mats, Osiris O'Malley – all this time. We can argue with each other until we're blue in the face, and I'll stay away for a day or two swearing never to speak to him again, but I always come back.

He understands me, I think, in a way no one I've ever met understands me. But that could just be my imagination making things up again. It likes to do that, especially with Snape, and creates pictures that I shamelessly watch each night as I fall asleep. Though the time when he asked to see how my battle wounds were healing was real, and the only way to show the long scratch down my back was to lift the hem of my shirt up… He'd run a finger down the deepest of those scratches – to check the scarring, you see – and if he'd just gone up an inch higher, my imagination reminds me, he would have met the catch of my bra…

Oh, Merlin. I've done it, haven't I? I've fallen for a snarky, somewhat evil, git of a professor. How do I get myself into these situations? Is there a sign on my back that says, "Please, make life as difficult for this one as possible"?

I need to meet someone. Someone my own age. It's sort of hard to do at Hogwarts, but I did, honestly, give it a shot. I even made a mental list Hermione would be proud of. However, one after another, they all found their way into the "no" bin as I compared them without ever having spoken to them to a man who, in our longer conversations, I usually find myself arguing with.

My life is filled with normal things, though, things that aren't tangled crushes that I'll get over once school lets out for the summer and I don't see him every day. Sirius and Remus are sending daily owls on various things – the glacially slow progress of getting to court, calming my various mental statuses, the curses Sirius has hurled at a portrait of his mother to no avail – and, in general, I'm just an average Fourth Year. And school champion. With a crush on a teacher. Whose name appears in the paper on average of 1.167 times a week, even if it's printed as "Alexandria Potter," or, occasionally, in the continental magazines, "Margret Lenore."

I'm up the river without a paddle. No, I'm not just paddle-less in the river, I've drifted out to sea and lost all my rations and am slowly dying of dehydration.

Despite all this, who do I go to when they tell us what the third task is at the end of May? Who helps me, in addition to Hermione and Ron, find spells I should learn to navigate through the travesty that was once the Quidditch pitch? Who has let me crash at least three times now on his couch after I fall asleep on him after a long night of practising?

I wonder if he knows he's enabling my addiction to him. He has to. He has to see that I enjoy being around him, where I can be myself, where I can not have to pretend to be perfect and nightmare-less and, in general, the kind of person someone like Osiris O'Malley would want to date. Gryffindors like Ron and Hermione – and when I say this, I mean true Gryffindors, not ones the sorting hat debated over – understand passionate rages, they understand courage and bravery and the call to action. But they don't get that, sometimes, people can just be in bad moods or not want to deal with the problems facing them or might want to take such a thing as legal action against people instead of duelling them…

And then, at last, the day comes. June 24th. The final task. There is nothing more I can do to prepare. I am certain to live, what with all the effort people have put into me, and just want this whole stupid thing to be over.

I hear the whistle, and I'm into the maze.

An indeterminable amount of time later, Cedric at my side, there is a horrible pull from behind my navel and a swirl of colour that destroys the amazing happiness I had allowed myself to feel just a moment earlier at the prospect of actually winning this damn thing, and from the sinking feeling in my gut I know that something's very, very wrong as our feet touch ground in the shadow of a yew tree in a dark, overgrown graveyard I feel I've seen before…


	8. what i want to forget

When I was only five, I asked my aunt how my parents had died. Even then, young as I was, I knew it was a question whose answer I would not want to know, and not only for the undue rage and still-seething hatred it would elicit from Petunia. There were no pictures of them in the house, nor were their names uttered in anything but anger – when their names were uttered at all, - and I half thought because of this that they'd been like me, a child kept out of sight, left in the dark, spidery recesses of a cupboard-under-the-stairs, ill-fed and prayed-for only to die. Was there some dark secret, I wondered, some secret mutation of genes or curse of fate lurking in my shadowed family tree? For surly these abominable things – these cupboards and whale-clothes, these slave-like chores and loveless days – were only fit for an abomination like myself, and no family, however inbred with walrus and whale, would treat any child worthy of love like they treated me.

I don't know what I expected as an answer. Perhaps this curse, this disease caused the monstrosities like myself who seemed human enough to die young, having lived only long enough to bequeath their shame to their child. More realistically, I expected to be told my mother was mentally ill and killed herself at some point in my infancy, that she'd never shared the name of my father, or else he'd never been tracked down, perhaps dying in a drug deal gone wrong or shived while languishing in some prison. My imagination was no less wild as a child, and fuelled by the sounds of gruesome, unsolved crimes on the Dursleys' favourite programme, Crimewatch UK.

In her shrill voice, grown tighter with anger, I remember her shouting at me, asking why I cared about no-good degenerates like them, but telling me they had gotten themselves killed in a car accident, which is where I supposed the explosive, sickly light that haunted my dreams came from. I was relieved – I remember that clearly – that they'd not fallen victim to the frightful noises that would pervade my own cell late at night as it echoed with macabre sharpness from the living room into my ears on Thursday nights.

Thereafter I was filled with the guilt of a child who survived what their parents failed to and found strange ways to blame their deaths on myself. I constructed the picture of a father who drank too much, who worked late to support his ill-fated family and stayed out later to avoid it, who was forced into marrying my mother after he got her pregnant by my grandparents, whose pictures occurred only twice in the entirety of the house, both of which are sepia-coloured with age. My mother I pictured then a brilliant child who fell in with the wrong crowd, got into drugs and drink, and dropped out of school when she got pregnant with me; as someone who tried to clean herself up after I was born. I imagined that I started crying in the car while they were on the way to get nappies or something of the kind for me, or fighting about how I won't shut up, when the car runs off the road into an electrical pole, or is sideswiped as he runs a red light in his distraction. I felt that I was never supposed to have survived, that I was just some junkie's daughter, and it was my mother, at least, who should have lived. That she was the one with promise and a future that I stole from her simply by being born and then, later, by living. For the longest time I thought this was why my aunt hated me, because I'd taken her big sister, who'd she'd idolized throughout her childhood, from her forever.

When I learned the truth, that my parents had been brave people, hopelessly in love with each other, that my father had been a little spoiled by brilliant in every way imaginable, that my mother was that intelligent woman I'd dreamed of and who'd sacrificed herself for me, I'd like to say the guilt did anything else but quicken within me, kicking with small but slowly lethal feet my insides, gestating to the state it has currently become. After all, what gifts have I that could have kept me from dying that night thirteen-and-a-half years ago? None, which means it was a fact of chance that kept me alive to die this day, a one-in-a-trillion thing, and, if she'd let Voldemort kill me like he wanted, when his wand turned next on her it could have been her chance.

What point does a child have in living? A year or so of life, a few odd months? I was just a handful of experiences, useless in the world without someone to take care of me; someone to run to when scared and hurt; someone who might take a vested interest in seeing me continue on. But she… she as brilliant, at her prime, only twenty-one; she could have gone on to do great things – the ordinary do not become Mind Healers – and marry again and have other babies with her emerald eyes; she didn't deserve to die. Not like this.

Not when her sacrifice is useless now, and there is a deep pain in the back of my eyes, especially painful at my lightning-bolt scar, which may well be ripping open and bleeding my life-stuff upon this soft ground, damp as it is from a recent rain. I struggle to hold onto my wand as I press a palm to the source of my blindness, but feel it quickly slip from my fingers, a useless twig in the cemetery earth. The echo of a cloaked and rounded man carrying the strangest bundle I've ever seen is burned into my retinas, and it is all I can to struggle – pointlessly – away from the direction I last remember seeing him.

A voice out of nightmares interrupted my pain, hissing through a mouthful of certainly sharp, inhuman teeth. "Kill the spare," it ordered before the pain skyrocketed and I fell, a useless lump, to the ground as a flash of sickly green light I knew all too well surrounded me.

But it was not me the inescapable curse had hit or the soft, baby's breath of grass and squelching mud that arrested my landing. I knew before I could open my eyes that the clammy, already cold thing that had once been a boy at the cusp of adulthood, handsome and kind and with everything going for him was now just another lifeless corpse in a field full of lifeless corpses. I opened them anyway, and with a numbness that does not dissipate the more times you find yourself facing it, and stared into his dead gray eyes as I lay sprawled across the body that had been so full of effervescent energy and so full of him a moment before.

Cedric Diggory was dead.

The pain was tolerable – because I had to tolerate it now if I was not to make my parents' sacrifice worthless, Cedric's murder a nonsensical footnote to my life's end – now. I groped blindly in this dark and moonless night for my wand, even the feeble starlight blocked by the great yew tree I'd been portkeyed under. I thought blindly of spells that I could use, knowing full well that without my wand I'd be as hopeless as any other fourteen-year-old girl in a strange, dark place.

If it'd been Hermione and Ron I'd practiced with for this bloody thing, it'd been Snape who had trained me. There were only so many spells of the correct disposition that three Fourth Years could find in their school library and learn to use, correctly, in a month's time. A wellspring of knowledge, I'd only questioned him once – I could understand learning a basic shield charm like protego, but some of the stronger ones seemed like just learning them was asking for trouble.

"The more spells you know," he'd said, his voice silky smooth as always, his dark eyes catching mine as he spoke. I remember the tingling sensation that exploded from every inch of me and way my knees felt like they were hit by a good jelly-legs curse just from that look, that voice. I shamelessly basked in his attention, wanting it as often as possible, making excuses to be around him to myself, one's that I'd never dare utter to anyone if asked on my death bed, and couldn't help but notice that, as he spoke, his voice grew more ardent as he spoke – a change so subtle I'd not have noticed it half-a-year earlier – the rest of this thought, "the more options you have. The more options you have in a crisis, the more likely you'll come out of it in one piece." It was not only because I found no flaw in his reasoning that I never brought the fact up again. No, because I could have sworn with all my heart that he was vested in some way in seeing that I came out of this last task alive, and I'm talking about more then the flack he'd be sure to receive from our illustrious Headmaster.

It was thanks to his foresighted prudence that my mind was running, between the painful throbs of my heart, through lists of spells not nominally in a schoolgirl's arsenal. Proficio, a shielding spell that could block both arrows and strong hexes; artafyrus, a lesser hellfire curse; the flinging curse, iaceo: these are the first that come to mind.

But it is dark, hopelessly so, and the pain darkens further what little I might have seen. Before I can grasp my only weapon, I find myself hoisted to my feet and dragged the short distance to a tombstone, where I only have an instant to grasp the knowledge of my fate before being slammed against the cold, rough stone, for, above the garland of flowers carved thereon, is a single set of words

Tom Riddle

followed by a pair of dates falling in the earlier part of the century.

I knew in that instant, as hands that shook bound me tightly, so tightly that even as I fought against him in my haze they grew tighter and cut more deeply than even he'd intended, who'd been trying to kill me all year long, who'd spurred somehow this set of events that had ended so cataclysmically for a handsome boy who'd tried to help me and shared our Pyrrhic victory at my insistence. A voice, ghostly familiar, brought the words up through memory, "They told me at the orphanage she lived just long enough to name me – Tom after my father, Marvolo after my grandfather."

I was tied to the grave of Voldemort's Muggle father, and the man who'd I'd kept alive when he'd led the murderer straight to my parents was the one who'd imprisoned me here.

Slowly, thought the pain was extraordinary, it became clear just how much I did not want to be here. Dust, chalky white in the pale light of the moon, rose from the grave upon which I stood. A hand, severed by its mate, joined it in a caldron that could have dwarfed even Ron as the gross stump it had once been joined to bleed freely over the graves of the late Charles Burr, esquire, and Sarah Chickering. I shivered in disgust and fear. I thought back desperately if Snape had ever said a thing about escaping captivity without magic in our lessons together, if anything I'd ever learned might serve me now. The futility of traditional education! A wished to God and Merlin that I'd a chance to tell Hermione just how worthless books were, Ron how stupid games were, Dumbledore the idea of fairness and sportsmanship were in this life, with words as colourful and varying as could be.

Strapped to that gravestone, I thought of just how short my life has actually been thus far. I thought of the snow falling off a tree in the bright, golden morning after a storm, and how the light caught the powdery flakes; I thought of Hermione, Ron, and I when things were still good between us and we were still young and carefree, and friends who could take on trolls and not ever be parted; I thought of a ruby sunset, as seen from the tower on a cool spring evening, illuminating the reborn plants below and hitting the Quidditch stands just so; I thought of my talks with Snape and the times when I thought he might say something wonderful, or he stood close enough to feel his overwhelming presence intimately, and the wonderful tingling, soaring feeling I got every time he looked at me a certain way that may or may not have actually ever meant anything; I thought of flying through the air on a warm afternoon, the exhilarating feeling of falling, of soaring, of making a fast turn into the wind, the illogical fear lessening in the pit of your stomach; I thought of a Weasley family dinner, with good food and better company and laughter and happiness and everything that is good and bright and nothing like the orderly, predictable, madding perfection of Azkaban South – I thought of how beautiful they were, how alive, how these snippets of life were the times when the world was most alive around me, and how I'd not even noticed it until now, ages later, and how I'd give all my heart and all my soul to see such wonderful things again. Tied to that stone I thought of all the things I'd never done and all the things I most certainly wanted to still do.

Men of Harlech stop your dreaming;

can't you see their spearpoints gleaming?

I vowed I would make it out of this alive, and so when Wormtail, that traitor, who has a place waiting for him in Antenora where his kind belong, approached me next with breath ragged and heavy with pain, I try to fight him. I am small and toothpick-esque from years of malnutrition and he that leathery look of one who has lost a great deal of weight in a short amount of time, but even with that there is easily a difference of fifty pounds between us and over half-a-foot in our heights. Even if I'd been free and motile I'd have failed to harm him in any way if our battle was only physical.

His eyes are beady and rat-like still as he takes his knife, still sticky and sickly warm with his own blood, and thrusts it into the crook of my right elbow, drawing it down slowly as my blood flows into his on the subtle knife. I do not scream – I will not give them that pleasure – but a hiss of pain escapes me. It sounds snakelike to my ears.

If I could lie back, I'd think of England, but as I'm bound facing the giant cauldron, I am forced to watch as he flicks three drops – just three, all this trouble just for three – into the bizarre concoction. I pray the thing within it drowns, the thing the thing that had ordered Cedric's death, but it doesn't. It's not alive enough to die, not now and never has been, and rises aching minutes of hoping against all hope, man-sized again and only vaguely human, all the features of him serpentine.

Lord Voldemort, a creature for whom nightmares failed to find words, was risen.

…

Words failed me.

Thoughts failed me.

I was acting on instinct now, forming a plan. I have to get my wand. Once I have that, I am powerful. Maybe not enough to survive for long, but enough to do something. Enough to cause the police to come – there had to be a city near a graveyard of this size – and I could flee in the distraction. Enough to disable Wormtail and hope his master isn't willing to follow after me alone.

But I'm still held captive by the grave of the man who spawned this monster. My wand is who-knows-where in the madness of the night, which seems to understand that tonight's the night for it to go all out, blacking out all but the brightest of stars and clinging in its utter emptiness.

It fills a moment later with the arrival of a score or so of men clad in long black robes and masks of bone white. Some are still clutching their left arms, where the Dark Mark is branded on them as on Wormtail, whose was used to call them here.

I suddenly very much wish Snape was here, even if that meant he was a true Death Eater and loathes Muggle-borns and their half-blood children, even if that means he could never like me like I like him, and that sooner or later he'll be bound to say something snarky in our arguments to this effect and break my heart, because if he was here that meant he could save me. With greater force, I wish that he will not show, because that means he is true to the Light and will not die a traitor's tortuous death here tonight, and because I – dare I think it, even now at the rattling of the spears, when destinies are completed? – love him and do not want to see his end. Because, when I escape this, it means… it means…

They are gathered now, talking of things I know, things I've guessed. But it is rebirthing party, and it has never been said Voldemort wasn't charismatic. You don't draw crowds to you with a face like his, after all. He gesticulated with his words, a southern preacher at his pulpit, the lawyer at the bar, the man who stirs the crowd to froth and then releases them out on the unsuspecting world.

I try to listen, but my mind is moving molasses-speed through simple thoughts. This man is singularly responsible for the deaths of untold numbers. He killed my parents and people like them for no reason at all except that he could. Killed boys like Cedric because they were in the way. And I am close enough now that I could place one good spell and end it all, at last, for real this time, and afford those souls some justice and my own a purpose in its death.

I know the curse, the ironic spell. It would be over quickly. It would not be murder so much as the putting down of a rapid, wild beast. I must have enough hate within me that it would work…

But he is not a beast, even when he brings a finger to caress the air above my cheek – an intimate gesture I have wished his spy would do at times, but sends only waves of disgust and sickness through me, – nor when he touches that skin and fails to burn as Quirell did, and it is that trace of humanity however small a shred, that keeps me from seriously entertaining this thought. Basilisks are inhuman, designed only to kill. Grindylows are animals that cannot be reasoned with if it comes to a fight. But men can choose their fates… even a Dark Lord might be redeemed one day…

Can't you see their warriors' pennants

streaming to this battlefield?

They ringed us, the Death Eaters, as he talked to them, extolling on his master plan, but still I paid no heed. I did not care what his plan was. I needed to get out of this. I am fourteen years old and in… like… will not die like this.

A wand is placed into my hand. It's my own, I knew this instinctively, as easily as breathing, and my bonds cut. The minions leave me alone – their eyes are on their risen master, whose red, cat-like ones are on mine. The thought of red and green, Christmas colours, runs sickly through my head for an instant before I push it away.

"Have you been taught how to duel, Harry Potter?" the monster asks using that stupid nickname. There should be crippling fear within me, a disabling sense of impending death. I register both dimly, but feel the epinephrine course stronger.

Men of Harlech stand ye steady;

It cannot be ever said ye for the battle were not ready.

Battle hymns played in my head. I gripped my want all the tighter, Snape's teachings readied.

Stand and never yield!

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

The night was filled with spell fire as they chased me. It was my one chance, that was all to escape – the strange connection between our wands had given me that, at least – and I flung curses over my shoulder as if there were no tomorrow at my pursuers. If I failed, there'd not be.

"Artafyrus!" I shouted, "Impedimenta! Deprimo! Expelliarmus! Expelliarmus!" ducking behind gravestones that collapsed into rubble when twisting, burning spellfire hit them. Looking back to aim a, "Dirumpi!" at the nearest body possible as I ran, I did not see right away what tripped me, only feel its waxen, unresponsive flesh.

Cedric.

The cup had to be nearby, that was all I knew, and I summoned it with all the magic left in my body, catching it by the handle and riding it back to the stands alive with cheering, the handsome boy's body entangled around my own.

The grass we landed in with soft and dry, recently mowed or charmed to shortness, whatever wizards do with grass. It was heady and alive after the pallid death-scent of the graveyard, mouldy and crumbling even before it reached my nose; this grass is alive, is growing, is the hope that there really is no death – because the grass in my nostrils, whose scent envelopes me even as the screaming starts to stream down the stand and footsteps thump and thud against the loamy earth in their haste to make it to us, is the hope of life after death. I giggle a little at this – a clear sign I'm entering shock – because I can't make sense of it, how karmicly anyone can return as grass, and feel the world spin a little even as I lay still.

The noise is overwhelming. Some girls are in hysterics. I envy them their freedom.

Dumbledore is the first to reach me, his aged hand touching my shoulder and turning me face up, where I can see the sidereal beauty above me for an instant before his face pops into view. It is sideways, which is an odd angle for anyone with a beard to be at, and I barely manage to whisper, "He's back. He's back. Voldemort," before loosing another giggle. I focus my attention on stifling them.

When I realize a moment later I'm still clutching Cedric's body, I try and fail to scuttle away. "He killed him…" Merlin, oh Merlin, he killed him, "Wormtail killed him… Couldn't stop it… didn't know…"

Snape is beside me then, Dumbledore and Mr. Lime Green Bowler Hat moving away, I don't know or care where. All I know is I keep telling him I'm sorry for some reason, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry over and over again, and he's saying things that even I know aren't true about how it'll all be okay, but I want to believe him because his voice is the most amazing thing I think I've ever heard. He brings an arm around me, another behind me, and brings me slowly into a half-sitting position. I feel the cool press of glass against my lips and drink willingly before he finishes telling me it's a calming drought, and feel him probing the various cuts and bruises I've sustained in my escape and the third task ages before. His long fingers are nothing like Voldemort's as they brush my skin expertly, pronouncing none of them life-threatening. It lingers though on the long mark Wormtail made down my arm. It's growing cold, my arm, and from the sound of the bastard cut something important like a tendon or major vein that I worsened in my duel, but nothing that can't be healed by a mediwizard in a trice.

I kill feel pumped up, disbelieving the battle's over. My limbs, to my shock, are shuddering, and Snape loosens me from his grasp only to conjure a cloak to wrap around me as we wait for Dumbledore to return.

Moody comes up, insisting I should be brought to the hospital wing. I'm not sure where mediwizards fall under Constant Vigilance, but it seems to me like Moody would sooner suffer through his injuries then take senses-dulling potions.

"Dumbledore said to stay…" I say thickly, not sure if the Headmaster did but unwilling to leave the quasi-embrace Snape has me in, helping me to stay sitting up as, apparently, laying sprawled out on the ground might give people the idea I'm dead or something.

Oh God.

Cedric's dead and I still thought that. I'm disgusting, I'm wretched. I'm monstrous-

Snape just cursed Moody flat on his back with a stunner. I don't think that's ever happened before, Moody being caught off guard like that. I wonder what he said that pushed the Potions Master over the edge. But, if my arm had been burning all night-

"Sir!" I suddenly remember, "There's a Death East- I mean, Death Eater at Hogwarts! There's a Death Eater here – they put my name in the Goblet of Fire, they made sure I had to-"

"Don't worry, Éléonore," he tried his calming voice on me again, sitting beside me on what was once my beautiful Quidditch field, "Karakoff fled the moment he felt the mark flare. He won't be troubling you again." There was a tone to his words that made me think that, if he tried, Snape would have words to say about it, and most of those words would be ones he taught to me over the last month.

I sink further into him, shamelessly taking what comfort I can from him, even if he'll never, ever, return what I feel for him. I think my shoulders are shaking, and it takes me a moment to realize I'm not sobbing, as I should be, but hyperventilating.

Voldemort's back, the monster is back, and it's all my fault… I should have known, I should have found a way to keep from competing, I should have just stood at the entrance and waited for someone else to reach cup…

Cedric's dead, and it's all my fault because I shouldn't have forced him to take the cup with me… I should have known what was about to happen and jumped in front of him… I should have tried harder to keep my wand in hand when Wormtail first approached…

I saw the ghosts of my parents tonight. They said they loved me.

If I'd just let Sirius and Remus kill their once-friend a year ago, none of this would ever have happened – maybe he'd still have come back, but at least I'd not have had to be in this trice-cursed tournament, and maybe Cedric would still be alive and happy and the true champion of this game, and he could have gone on to marry Cho and they could have had beautiful kids and he could be in the ministry with his father who I can hear crying out futilely that it can't be his son dead there, as well it shouldn't, but if wishes were fishes the oceans would have been filled long ago.

If I'd never been born, Voldemort would never have tried to kill me…

If I'd been less noble, less Gryffindor…

I gave into quiet sobs then, and if anyone remaining in the stands thought it was odd to see Snape the Perpetual Git comforting The Girl-Who-Lived, there were more important things to worry about now.

I almost fell backwards when he suddenly jumped away. Of course, I thought, he's noticed what's going on and is disgusted he let it go on this long, being human and all… but he wasn't running away in abject horror from what he'd been doing a moment later, no, he was standing over the stunned form of Moody. But it wasn't Moody at all: it was Bartemius Crouch – Junior, to be specific – a face I recognized only from an escapade in Dumbledore's pensive.

A Death Eater.

Not Karakoff, but a true Death Eater.

I – along with my classmates, most of whom I'm not modest when I say couldn't take on a dung beetle, let alone a Dark Lord's flunky – had been in a classroom on a regular basis with a Death Eater, and not a reformed one like Snape, no, but a real, live, evil-incarnate Death Eater who'd helped torture pour Neville's parents into their beds in St. Mungo's.

I lost it then.

My wand suddenly in my hand, and I'm shouting, "Confringo!" at still stunned Junior. A hedge begins to burn nearby.

Snape bats my curse away from the unfortunately not burned man with barely a thought.

"Reducto," I try this time, and a divot forms in the ground near his feet.

"Éléonore, stop this-"

"Culteris," a handful of branches fall from a hedge as if they've been severed by a single knife-swipe.

"This maggot's not worth-"

"I don't care!" I shout at him, waving my wand madly and having nothing but red-gold sparks fly from it. "He tried to get me killed. I'll kill him."

"It's not-"

"Didn't you just hear me?" I shout again. If there are any eyes left in the stands, they are on me now, "He put my name in the cup. When the dragon failed to kill me, he tried Grindylows. He sent me into the maze and let Cedric die!"

Shouting back, "It's not worth becoming a killer over!"

I take a step closer to him, wobbly and bleeding and dizzy, but drawing myself up to my full height, however little that was, I came nearer this man who probably knew more ways to kill someone with a deck of cards then was really necessary, this man who I loved fruitlessly. "Yes," I insisted, "it is."

My clarity on this fact may have surprised him, but he took a step forward too. "No, it isn't."

A stride again; he was less than a yard from me now. "Yes, it is."

He crossed that miniscule distance and was right up next to me so that I could feel his heart pounding with anger and excitement and fear, and he no doubted could mine as it thudded in and out of my chest, "No," he repeated, "it's not."

I was so angry at him I didn't know what to do but poke him in the chest with my wand. He restrained my hands, his own strong and sure on my upper arms, and I don't know what might have happened if we hadn't both seen the form stirring out of our peripherals. Almost as one we pointed our wands at the impostor and (myself vocally) cast a stunner on him. The blonde slunk back into the earth beside the eyeball now slowly and sickly spinning beside him.

That was all I needed right then, and I vomited all over our shoes at the sight.


	9. In Which All The King's Horses and All The King's Men Can't Put Me Back Together Again

There are many, many things in life I could have done without knowing. The fact that Percy apparently frenches Penelope on a regular basis is one that I can attribute to Ginny and would have given me nightmares if I didn't have more horrible things to dream about. Another is Funestus, lovingly called the Suicide Spell, which was placed on certain operatives during the war either by their master or by the men themselves to keep them from spilling the beans about important details of plans. The shade of purple it causes people to turn is quite unpleasant. As is the shade of white it causes the observers of the spell's effects to turn. There are also such wonderful things as how they make certain egg-based condiments and the existence of truly evil bastards in the world that I also could have gone forever without knowing, but I suppose my luck isn't that great.

 

Naturally, you see, when the Girl-Who-Lived upchucks on her shoes and those of the guy she has definite feelings for, it tends to turn heads. Then they noticed, after a moment of ogling, there was a supposedly dead man lying stunned nearby, and through a variety of events I was too busy softly rocking on my feet to pay attention to, they decided to question him.

McGonagall at one point while they were deciding what to do came up to me and put a hand on my elbow, "Come along, Potter," she said, fighting back tears, "Come along… hospital wing…" I feel an instant surge of gratitude towards this grandmotherly woman. At least someone can think clearly in this situation, and the clean, white walls of the infirmary sound quite nice right now… Snape, my only reason for staying, was heavily involved the doings with the stunned Death Eater, and so I shifted, allowing her to lead me away from the site. We'd gone barely a foot, though, before the Headmaster took notice of the movement. "No."

Her outrage was vocal, "Dumbledore, she ought to – look at her – she's been through enough tonight-"

I was glad there was someone fighting for me then. I was too stunned to fight for myself then. I wanted to hide from the world. No, I wanted to find that worn, fuzzy blanket Snape always covers me in when I fall asleep on my feet in his office and wrap myself in it, curling on the couch until I was just a tiny ball with my back to the world and my face pressed into the soft, safe cushions. I'd have liked Snape to be there too, because his presence was commanding and certain and there was an unbelievable comfort in the idea that I didn't have to do everything myself, that there was a stronger Atlas to help me when I fell, broken and bloodied, though it wasn't a necessity. The rooms where he lingered held enough of his taste to keep the worries at bay for several days – after all, the safest place from any snake had to be in another's den, right? Not to say I plan on hiding forever. But just one night would be nice…

"She needs to understand." I can understand quite well, thank you, Junior put my name in the goblet with the intent that I should help his master be reborn. It worked, end of story. That's all I need to know to understand. Unless he confides that he was under Imperious the whole time while he was torturing Neville's parents, which I highly doubt given everyone thought their master was quite wrongly dead, then nothing he might say might cause me to have a sliver of compassion for him. In fact, I'm so compassionless at the moment that, as soon as I regain control of my emotions, I'm thinking about borrowing some really high-heeled shoes from Simone or Sylvie or whatever the last one's name is and letting the point of high French fashion become quite friendly with his two, quite normal, if slightly protuberant eyes.

Then I picture that action and am glad that I've already emptied my stomach. Is this a good thing? Do Dark wizards get squeamish when they torture? Is this a sign that I am, no matter what the evil parricide might say, not like him? Or is this something that tells me that Riddle once had to have been human too, and, by hating him so much, I will inadvertently follow down his path? Well, I can understand his desire to change his name at least. Who ever would be scared of Dark Lord Tom or Darth Alexandrie-Margaux?

Oh Merlin. That's shock. Definitely shock. Why won't Dumbledore just let me go? I feel so tired and so old…

Still, I find enough energy to glare at Dumbledore for his order that I stay, and smiled at McGonagall when she conjures a nice, unusually soft, chair for me to collapse in as they interrogated and questioned. There is Mr. Lime Green Bowler Hat – it takes me a moment to recall he was the Minister of Magic and probably, in all likelihood, had a name – and a couple of men who looked to have hag ancestry a few generations back in addition to Dumbledore and the two professors, and Fudge keeps interrupting with things I take as a given to be stupid and insulting to my intelligence, but eventually Mood- I mean, Crouch Junior, has related his tale to us, which is, quite as I expected, done of his own free will. Finishing, "I offered to carry the Triwizard Cup into the maze before dinner. Turned it into a Portkey. My master's plan worked. He is returned to power and I will be honoured by him beyond the dreams of wizards," the insane smile of a man who truly believes, against all Fudge's odds, in his cause takes over his still childish features. He must have been very young when he joined up. He still is very young, at least in comparison to those around me, now. A few things about him are fixed to my memory… the straightness of his nose, the gauntness of his face; the wildness of his eyes, so similar to Sirius's when I first met him, that I supposed it was Azkaban's madness I saw reflected there.

And then one of his nuchal arteries bursts in a spray of crimson blood, killing him instantly.

They took me to the hospital wing then. I was shaking too badly to be of any use to anyone. You'd think I'd be better at accepting death, at seeing people die before my eyes… It never gets any less sickening, even if the man is one I'd've gladly murdered myself just a handful of minutes before. He looked barely out of school in the moments before he died, hardly older than myself, and though he was a murderer he was a child too…

I felt the night ticking on, that every second I sat was one moment wasted, a moment more that madman was loose in the world, a trace of desperate madness creeping into me. I was responsible for this atrocity, I must stop it… and, if they wouldn't let me, I'd do it anyway. But Dumbledore insisted on knowing what happened, and Sirius was there by some miracle that I couldn't remember, but what was there, honestly, to say? "The Cup was a portkey that took me to a graveyard. Wormtail killed Cedric, then rebirthed Voldemort with his flesh, my blood, and his father's grave-dust. He talked, then we duelled. Something happened with our wands. Ghosts came out. I ran. Found the cup and came back." And, essentially, that's what I said.

But there was more then that. How could I tell the wizened Dumbledore, who called death "the next great adventure," how scared I was to die? How I had too great a thirst for life that I'd barely begun? And what of Sirius? It wasn't like I could say that it was my desire to crush my lips – and varying other body parts – to Snape's that had fuelled the fire that allowed me to flee in front of him. They had to know there was more and tried to flush it out of me, but those stark basics were all that I could share. They were the facts. Everything else I had to share were my fears, my thoughts on death and life, the mental spellbook I'd been thumbing through – and I knew as well as the next girl spells like artafyrus and dirumpi were classified as borderline Dark – and none of these I could share with these men, however pivotal they were in my life. Telling them would be like Hermione telling her parents about our classes – they could hear what she was saying, but in no way could those Muggles ever fully understand what it meant to grasp a spell after initial trouble or feel the flow of magic from your core as you cast a charm that came as easily to you as breathing. I could only think of one person in the world who might be able to understand by plight, but he was with Junior's body still…

Madam Pomprey heals me, though Wormtail's mark will leave a scar she says, and has left me to my well-wishers. Hermione, Ron, Mrs. Weasley, Bill, Sirius – everyone I loved but Fleur and my professor – but I couldn't stand their presence. I felt too dirty, too unworthy to be around them. I was responsible for Cedric's death, for Merlin's sake! My blood had allowed Voldemort to return, and I'd fled from battle without killing him again! I didn't deserve their sympathy, their worry – I wanted them to yell at me for being careless, a fool, for not learning enough, for not dying. But they were nothing but concerned for me and my well being. It seemed senseless, the act of wizards who knew not what they should do.

I retreated into the locker room-like showers, showering until I scalded my skin and not caring at all for my tender wounds. I deserved the pain, my wardens in Surry were right about that, however odd that may sound, the Dursleys, right. I should have stayed in that cupboard and never tried to escape…

I could still feel the bastard I'd let survive put his knife into me, the one stained with his blood. I could still feel Voldemort's finger on my cheek, a mockery of a lover's caress, and wanted to scrub my face with sulphuric acid to remove the memory of it. And then there was the blood spatter from the Suicide Spell, which had dried unremarkably amongst the blood from my injuries and what Wormtail's stump had dripped on me. I would have to burn my clothes, shave my hair, scrape my skin to ever be clean again. My wand was on the bedside table, though, and no matches, razors, or steel wool were secreted away in any corner of the showers. All I had at my disposal was a bottle of strawberry shampoo and three bars of ivory soap. It seemed woefully inadequate. I cleansed until I burned with sparkly newness, then scrubbed some more.

At least Snape was there when I returned, waiting beside my bed when I got there. Hermione and Ron were only showing vague surprise at his presence – I could feel the concern for me pouring off of them in waves. And fear, a dark, saline smell. That rolled off them, an almost physical sensation that could have crippled anyone, and would have me if I could have done more then register the sensation at the moment – as were Mrs. Weasley and Bill, though they probably only thought he was bringing me potions to put me to sleep and erase my dreams. I don't think I could ever sleep again. If I close my eyes, I'll see images never meant to be seen once, let alone repeated in dreams. Snuffles the God-dog was full on raised hackles, bared teeth though by the foot of my bed. I guess that's only understandable – the two never did like each other, and me liking both of them isn't likely to change that – but it's damn annoying right now. At least is standing calmly, though that could be because he doesn't know Sirius is here, but I'm feeling generous towards him. A lot of things, actually, but that's the only one I dare express in this company.

"Sir-" I began, blushing Weasley red as I start to apologize for his shoes. Nothing a spell couldn't fix, but still. They're shiny and new already.

"You should be in bed, Miss Potter." I hope the formalities are for the sake of our audience. I hop onto the bed and sit there, cross-legged at its head, and stare expectantly at him. He doesn't mention the shoes at all, for which I am immensely glad.

"What's Fudge decided?" I asked with more concern then I've shown my own well-being so far tonight, "Is he going to listen to Dumbledore?"

"Not likely. He's spent too long telling everyone things are fine to change his tune now."

"Bastard," I say aloud. The others start at my language, but it seems an appropriate enough word for my parents' murderer; Snape only nods, seemingly unconcerned about my murderous rage earlier. Maybe, in retrospect, it's not such a big deal now. The man's dead now. I shudder, and he reaches out a hand to me. Sirius growls deeply now, but I take it anyway. It is warm and calloused like I imagined, an anchor to reality. He is as dark and mysterious as always, but he is alive. He is snarky and positively evil sometimes, but he is alive. He is rude and broken and stuck at the end of the war he's now finding out was just the star of a thirteen year ceasefire, but he is alive and he is warm and exuding the strength of knowledge and the safety of endurance. I'd bury myself in him if I thought he'd let me. He returns the ungodly pressure I put upon his hand, and for a brief moment I allow myself to think he loves me like I have found myself loving him.

Dumbledore comes in and seems to have expected this strange gathering. "Fudge's attitude," he delves right in, "though not unexpected, changes everything. All those that we can persuade of the truth must be notified immediately." He sends Bill away. And then – stupidly, I think, considering how Mrs. Weasley freaks out a moment later – tells Sirius to transform.

Snape moves to start at this, but I grip his hand all the tighter, refusing to let go. "Please, Severus," I whisper, using his name for the first time and liking how it felt, "don't."

Accusingly, "Unhand my goddaughter now," Sirius starts before there is even time to take in his change from canine to rather shaggy-looking man.

"Sirius," I try to reason with him, "in case you haven't noticed, I'm the one who won't unhand him."

I should've known better than to try logic on him. "What Dark spell have you put on my goddaughter, Snivillus?"

"Is it such a surprise, Black, that she might actually care for my company?"

Sirius raises his wand, but Dumbledore steps in and may well have said Merlin was come again for all the nonsense he spouted about the pair of them setting aside their differences. I just can't take it, and tell them both – my godfather and my professor – that if they don't start behaving like grown men I'll never talk to them again. I guess something of Mrs. Weasley might have rubbed off on me, because they both, however grudgingly, agree not to kill each other in my presence. Will wonders never cease?

I want to get the rest of them out of the room and tell Sirius that, like it or not, his foe means something to me, but there's no time and I've just no energy for that sort of thing. It's all I can do not to fall into hysterics at all I've seen tonight…

Voldemort's alive…

… his servants returned…

… Cedric murdered for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time…

… Junior dead in some twisted manner by his own hand, to be hailed by his fellows as the bringer of their master from death's knife-edge…

… I shake my head fiercely. I will not think on any of that. I will not cry. I will not be weak. I cannot afford it. I cannot forgive myself for what I allowed to happen. I cannot forgive myself, now that I've calmed slightly, for my murderous and torturous impulses towards Junior. I cannot be pleased that I'm alive, though every cell within me is shouting its joy at the fact, and I find my eyes falling on things that I'd ignored in the past as my attention swerved to seemingly more important things. The stars that shine brightly through the new moon here, the starched softness of the sheets I rest upon; the way Mrs. Weasley's hands wring in worry as if looking for something to easy their mistress's pain. They are more real then war plans. They are the reason I fought so hard. But I cannot let myself be distracted from the planning of other wizards' demises, because, if I do, it could be the end to the starlight shining on a warm June night, soft clean sheets in hospital wings, or the movement of a mother's hands. These are things to fight for.

"Severus," the Headmaster asked, ignoring my plight if he even registered it at all, "you know what I must ask you to do. If you are ready… if you are prepared."

Snape – Severus – turns his eyes from towards mine, holding them as he slowly pulled his hand out of mine. I struggled against him. I knew instantly what Dumbledore wanted, what the wizard I loved would do. "No!" I protest. "You can't! He'll torture – kill – you-!" I was griping onto his fingertips as if this alone would stop him. I'd not risked my life to come back here just to let himself throw his life away – not if anything to say about it, and, Merlin above, I'd be damned if I didn't find a way to make my voice known. I could feel the others' eyes on us in shock, even Dumbledore's twinkling gems, but didn't care.

"It's what I must do, Éléonore." My name was an embrace falling from his lips, as if I was a perfect and wonderful thing in his eyes. I barely noticed the others' reactions to his use of my name.

Whispering, "I don't want you to die." He looked even deeper into my eyes, and I tried to send every feeling I had for him through the silent medium afforded us. I would not let him die. Not like Cedric. Not like Mum and Dad. Not like the Riddle's caretaker, or Bertha Jorkins, or any of the others. I wanted him to know with all my heart that I was fighting for sidereal nights, not for him to risk his life before I'd woven it with mine.

"I won't," he promised me, and pulled his hand entirely from my grasp and swept out of the room, a wordless shadow disappearing into that dark, moonless night. Immediately, my anchor gone, the sense of apprehension overwhelmed me. I hardly noticed Sirius sent off on his own death-inviting errand or Mrs. Weasley trying uselessly to comfort me. I didn't care. Severus was going to die, and I'd never have kissed him, or told him how I feel, or how I'd only survived this night thinking of him and all the things I'd never known.

I was going to be left all alone in the world – again – because I couldn't die when I was supposed to. My one chance at love would disappear, and the loss of Sirius – who'd run afoul of Aurors or some creature of darkness trying to, "round up the old crowd," I was deathly sure – would take my only hope of escaping Azkaban South with him… I should just make it easy on all of them and die next time, to save them all… I had to stop him. I had to catch him, keep him from donning that black robe and that white mask and going to the wizard who'd stolen my blood and whose wand had killed my father first, the father he did not like, and then my mother, who, like him, could have lived, and submit to torture and pain and then death in attempt to find a way to defeat the monster I had unleashed because I didn't die when he pointed it at me…

I'd been right all those years ago. I was a monster undeserving of love. I was meant to be locked in cupboards and slave-worked, where the pain I could inflict on the undeserving was minimal at best. No wonder Severus wouldn't stay for me – why he could never love me – why Sirius had gone after Wormtail rather then stay with me – why the world could so easily believe the things Rita Skeeter and the Star and Stave wrote about me… Mum should have lived. She'd not have made these mistakes…

But I was alive, and I had to do my best to mitigate the damage I'd caused.

I noticed then Mrs Weasley's arms around me and the tears threatening in my eyes. I tried to push her away. "Let me go," I struggled, freeing an arm and going for my wand. "I've got to go after him! I'm not going to let him throw his life away for me!"

"You've got to take your potion, Harry."

"No! I won't take it – I've got to-" But there were hands on me, holding me down. More hands then I could fight off, clawing as I was to get away, to go after him. "You don't under-" The phial was smashed against my lips and clanked on my teeth, the contents pouring into my mouth and down my throat even as I tried to spit it out. The effects, however, were instantaneous, and the dreaded darkness of sleep took me.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

I snuck out of the hospital wing as soon as my captors were distracted or disappeared and made it only in the stupid, itchy pyjamas they issue to the tower two mornings after the incident, and collected clean clothes, my cloak, and the map. I followed the twisting pathways and hidden passages to a place I'd never been before, searching for a dot that was no where to be found.

I found his chambers and sweet-talked the second head of the runespoor statue that guarded his lair into letting me in – who'd ever have thought parsletongue would come in handy for something other then disreputable deeds? They were empty, but I didn't mind. I intended to wait until he returned, whatever his condition, and he could yell at me then. I didn't care. I just needed to see him alive.

And so I cleaned. It's what I do. Like Mrs. Weasley bakes. It keeps my hands busy, my thoughts from worrying. His quarters were neat and orderly, a long but narrow affair consisting of a sitting room that led into a bedroom, with the bath beyond that. His lab was off to one side, clearly carved out of another set of quarters next door, with boxes and cloth-covered furniture littering the back rooms thereof. I found cauldrons in need of scrubbing, then countertops that might not have been, and then floors that defiantly weren't. I dusted, I polished, I made the slept in bed – and in the hours when I felt too empty to move, I curled on that same bed, drinking in his scent and hoping to a God I wouldn't believe in that he'd come back soon.

If anyone was looking for me, they never did find me.

Time passed with no meaning. I was beginning to get truly afraid he was dead when the third day came and found me staring into space in the middle of his musky, minty bed and wondering what I would do if he was truly gone. I heard the crashing of the main door opening as if from far away and jumped to my feet, running into the main room to find it… empty.

The door to his potions lab was open, though, and it was there I found him. He looked, honestly, a mess. I'd never seen anyone look so old. Blood was matted in his dark hair, his eyes bloodshot and bleary – not at all the sharp blackness I remembered so clearly, - his clothes were rumbled and torn in places, dirt-stained in others. He'd been on the end of at least one crucio I was sure, but at least he was alive.

My sigh of relief was audible.

He jumped and I was on the receiving end of his wand for an instant before he saw it was me. "Éléonore," he said slowly, lowering the weapon, and turning back to the cabinet of potions he was examining, "how did you get in here?" He wasn't overly concerned.

"I can talk to snakes," and that was all I needed to say for him to understand. He always understood without having to have the whole thing laid out before him. "What are you looking for? Let me help."

"I can-"

"You're barely on your feet. Sit down and let me take care of you for once – you've done so often enough for me – it's my fault you're in this position." He was too tired to argue, a sign of worse things, I'd feared, or maybe I'd slipped into my Mrs. Weasley voice, one that no one could deny. I forced him into a chair and, through his instructions and sheer time I'd spent in one infirmary or another, I handed him the correct potions. "You're never, ever, going to do that to me again, do you understand? I thought – I thought you were as good as dead, Severus!"

A soft chuckle came at this. "A spy's work is never done."

"I don't care. I don't like seeing you like this. I'm sure you don't like feeling like this either."

"The Dark Lord's not pleased that you escaped. Nor that there weren't enough pieces left of Rosier – Evan Rosier's cousin, Edward, that is – worth collecting."

I paled briefly at the thought, and then insisted, "I'm not going to be distracted that easily, Severus!"

"It's not as simple as that."

"Then make it that simple."

"Éléonore-"

"No, listen to me!" I spilled out everything as he sat there, wearily, in his chair. I was kneeling on the cold stone floor by his side, halfway through cleaning a cut across his thigh that I doubt he'd even noticed in the state he'd been in, and it was uncomfortable and awkward looking up at him, but I went on anyway, telling him how, after dropping my wand, I'd thought of his spells to save me and how, chained to Riddle Senior's grave marker, how I thought of him as my reason for living, and how, throughout our months together, I'd wanted nothing more then a sign from him that he cared, but I didn't care if he felt anything at all for me anymore because I just wanted him alive, whatever the reason, and I wasn't about to let him go back to that monster. I shared my fears, the thought that I was going to die – and the fact that I might have willingly if it would have helped if not for him – and was answered only by the silence I'd come to know in the impossible time of eternity I'd spent in his quarters waiting for his return.

I felt like a fool.

I shouldn't have blurted it out that way, but that's what I did. I'd have been in Slytherin if I had any subtly.

I shouldn't have expected him to feel a thing for me at all. I was a Potter after all, and he was a Snape. There was too much history. He still hated my father's memory, my godfather and Remus. He hated them in a way that was burningly alive. I was everything he had to hate – impulsive and noble and my father's child – and so much anger could leave no room for love in any soul. For all I knew it went back farther then that, and there was some feud between our houses that sat facing each other across the narrowest space of the channel, something ancient and dating back to the time when Calais was still a part of Muggle England, something one generation centuries later could never hope to end, even as the houses themselves faced their ends…

I got up to leave, muttering apologies and feeling my cheeks flaming even as a hole was carved out of my stomach. I should never have hope that anyone could love me.

"Éléonore," he says suddenly, followed by a long, tenuous pause. His lab smells of antiseptic. It burns my nose. "I'm… I'm too old for you."

I rage in return, "I don't care! You think any of the boys my own age have half as much a clue as you do what I've seen, what I've been through? I feel far older then I've any right to be."

A different tack then – a sign of excuses, I thought, and let a feeble hope ignite in my soul – "I'm your professor. You're a student."

"Don't you get it? I don't care. All I know is, is that I, I love you. Isn't that enough?"

"…Éléonore…" he said my name slowly, painfully, and I felt myself drawn back towards him. Close enough to touch, if he wanted to. Close enough that I could taste his breath as I took in my own – wanting of a toothbrush after his ordeals, yes, but warm and so very him that I didn't care how it tasted so long as it was his – and sense his exhaustion as if it were mine. Maybe it was. I'd not slept since the hospital wing… I'd been too afraid to let myself close my eyes and too filled with epinephrine to be forced to sleep against my will, "…I don't deserve someone like you."

"Shouldn't I be the judge of that?"

I expected another argument, another impossibility that I could overcome, but he had none left. And so, filled with fear I'd still be turned away, I bent down until my face was level with his and, with painful slowness, brought my lips to his with a soft, slow kiss that slowly grew stronger as I felt his own press back against mine hungrily. I'd no idea if I was doing anywhere decent, only that my heart was fluttering with freed emotion, and I let a hand burry itself in his matted hair as his less-injured hand made its way under my chin and pulled me closer, the other coming to rest on my hip securely. I could feel the laboured breathing of his chest, the movement of my own quickening in return. His mouth was incessant, but I didn't care, it was glorious and impossible and I could have flown without a broom I was so happy, so overjoyed that he might return something I felt for him that it's frankly ridiculous to even think about.

He broke away, breathing heavily. "You should go," he said.

"Yes," I agreed slowly, panting a little myself, overwhelmed at my first kiss, at the sensation of being kissed by a man who knew what he was doing far more then I did, and desperately wanting more even as I was scared of what more might be and knowing, whatever I claimed to feel, I was still only fourteen, "I should…"

I didn't make a move towards the door.

"I can take care of myself from here," he laboured. He probably could. I still worried though. "Please," he whispered this time. Maybe he feared what might happen if I stayed too. I don't know. Only that he wanted to deal with it himself and would not be forced into accepting help much longer, even if it was from someone who'd he'd just locked lips with…

Against my better judgement, I gathered my map and cloak, and headed back towards the tower, knowing at last the meaning of the phrase, "Cloud Nine." I might have even been skipping, but I'm not sure about that. My mind kept running in a single, sing-song loop.

Snape had kissed me.

Snape had kissed me.

Snape had kissed me.

Hermione had a fit when I returned, demanding to know where I'd been. It was none of her damn business, but she didn't care. It annoyed me deeply as she went on, "We thought something had happened to you," she went on and on, vexed, "that Death Eater's had gotten you." It was only the mention of these human demons that brought me back to earth. Maybe I was just a silly school girl, giddy over her first (really wonderful) kiss, but I was also something more… The Girl-Who-Lived when Voldemort had wanted me dead. He wouldn't stop until he saw my charred remains in the ground.

I paled again. The fact that Rosier was dead by my wand began to sink in fully. "I'm sorry if I made you worry," I muttered, trying to slink up to our dorm.

"Where have you been?"

"None of your God-damned business, Hermione."

"With Snape? I saw how you looked at him-"

"Just shout it out for the world to hear why don't you?"

Unrepentant, "So you were. He's your professor, Harry-"

"So what if I was? What I do is my own business."

"Not when it affects the rest of us."

"How does it affect you, pray tell? I've a life, you know. I've places I want to go and people I want to see and things I want to do. I'm not some perfect little heroine content with the part they give me!"

"It's not all about you – there are such things as rules-"

"You think the rules matter anymore? I watched the darkest wizard in half a century rise from the dead, and you think what the rules tell me what I can and can't do matter still? People have already died. More are going to die in this senseless war before its up – and you're angry because the one good thing I've managed to snatch up from all of this doesn't fit into your rules? News flash, Hermione, nothing can ever fit perfectly into your rules, and you're just going to make yourself unhappy trying to stick to them."

And so I hid from the world I would soon leave for Azkaban South as all around me the world went on as if nothing had happened and Voldemort was still good-as-dead in the forests on the continent, and everyone I loved prepared for a war in the shadows of the days that continued, against all odds, to come.


	10. Chapter Nine, In Which I Am (Officially) the Wicked Witch of Calais

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You said they had found the secret of happiness because they had never heard that love can be a sin."
> 
> \- - Lavinia Mannon in Homecoming from Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill - -
> 
> Part Two: Year Five

The one good thing about owning a law firm is the fact that you have lots of lawyers to do your bidding. Another one is, when you need to make an appointment, they tend to be quite accommodating.

The story thus far? Quite simple. They sent me to Azkaban South and apparently recruited some guards from the main facility, because come the second of August I'm being attacked by two dementors in an alleyway with my whale of a cousin. The Ministry, which seems to have followed Fudge down the well-intentioned paved road, and is denying Voldemort's return with a ferocity that makes one wonder what they really know. This summer's interment has been the worst on record, I think. I've been having nightmares and I can't use silencing charms, and so more shoes then usual have been thrown at me; Dudley's still on his stupid diet and leering at me after I get out of the bath; no one's told me a word about what's going on with Voldemort, and nothing's even on the Muggle news; I couldn't be in France with Fleur, and though she's sending me what information (and French fashion magazines, will the girl ever learn?) she has and talking of getting a job on Diagon; and, to top it all off, I've not heard a thing from or regarding above stated Potions Master that I kissed in the last week of classes and have seriously become worried about. My law firm of Dunn, Hastings, and McGully (established in 1653 by three married sisters) has been doing spin control as best they can, but there's not much they can do without knowing the truth.

That's the sort of thing that requires more then an owl that may be intercepted. Luckily, though, when you've been accused of breaking the RRUW (The Reasonable Restriction for Underage Wizardry) like I have, you tend to need legal counsel. So they break me out of jail one fine morning, Remus coming right up to the door, that fine Friday morning in the wizarding world's version of a tired suit, and taking me out the front door. I considered telling my aunt that he was my boyfriend and was taking me to Paris for the rest of the summer, but he'd already introduced himself as my "uncle" Remus Lupin. They even had a car a everything – they being the woman with vibrant pink hair and an electric blue mini-dress and fingerless driving gloves of blackish dragonhide whom I was later informed was one Nymphadora Tonks, aged twenty-one-and-a-half, and my godfather's cousin's daughter and his third cousin once removed…

Pureblood family ties were so annoying.

In the hour it took us to go up the A24 to London, I decided Tonks was officially the coolest person ever. I mean, she's like totally a metamorphmagus, which is way cool in and of itself, and has great taste in music and I bet I could get her to take me to one of the tattoo shops on the corner of Diagon and Varial… I've always kind of wanted a wicked tattoo, and I think getting a Hungarian Horntail would be an interesting way of getting over last year… The only problem with getting to know Tonks is that it was because Remus wouldn't tell me a thing about, oh, where we were going after, or what was going on in the world outside of French fashion, or what he'd been up to…

"You could have at least told her you were my pimp or something."

"Excuse me?" he said over the sound of Tonks's guffawing.

"I mean, you totally could pass for one, in a sort of aged-professor-who-spends-his-time-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks way."

"I think he's confused by the term," Tonks offered, still laughing as she moved the car between a gap in two SUVs that I was sure no self-respecting unicyclist would have dared, let alone a driver of any car. That led to a quite interesting discussion of "more reputable" disreputable things I could tell my jailers about my life for next summer, which seemed delightfully far away…

Now, I'm not sure I own Dunn, Hastings, and McGully per se, but there's something involved with retainers and stocks and Clifford Chance… I don't know, only that I was ushered in and brought straight to one of the firm's managing partners, Mrs. ArietisCauldwell, which was very nicely furnished, even if she did have beetles and butterflies in collector's cases on the walls, and made me feel distinctly underdressed in my mini-skirt. You can't blame me, though, it's like dragon's breath hot and I don't have the ability to cast convenient cooling charms whenever I start to break a sweat, unlike some fully-clothed wizards.

Tonks, I noticed, gave my "uncle" the old hairy eye as she took a chair in the waiting room. Remus, sadly, did not notice.

"Miss Potter, what I pleasure it is to meet you, though I wish it was under better circumstances."

"Please, Mrs. Cauldwell, call me Éléonore."

"I imagine you should call me Ari then – I don't imagine Remus here has told you, but I was Lily's maid-of-honour at her wedding."

I wanted to find out more – I'd never run across someone who'd known my mother so closely, which is quite odd considering how everyone tells me the world revolved around her, people liked her so much – but I didn't then. On the drive to our as-yet-unnamed destination I learned that Arietis – known as Ari Gamp then – had been a Ravenclaw, the Head Girl the year after my parents' graduated. Her mother had never shared the identity of Ari's father with anyone, and so it'd been quite the scandal for a while, but not enough for either to be blasted from the Gamp family tree. In the years after Mum and Dad died, she'd joined Dunn, Hastings, and McGully, married the half-blood Ephraim Cauldwell (which had gotten her blasted off the family tree), and had two children: Owen, a Hufflepuff who'd started last year, and Alcyone, a daughter, would be starting this September. She'd been named partner just last year and in part because of this (and that she was the third cousin twice removed on his father's side or something of Sirius – how does anyone not marry their cousin in the wizarding world? Let me just say, yuck. I'd kill myself before marrying Dudley. I think I need a shower after even thinking that thought) she'd been willing to take our cases.

Ari dived right in, updating me on the legal doings she'd been doing for me through Sirius by Remus…

1\. The case of Sirius Black v. The Department of Magical Justice, which is going to trial in the next few weeks. She's reasonably sure she can win that – after all, no trial equals violation of habeas corpus (which, it turns out, wizards do have) and his freedom. The real problem is going to be proving him innocent of a fourteen year old crime, but that's something she can keep in court forever until we catch the rat bastard.

2\. The case of Sirius Black v. Rita Skeeter, which, like Black v. The Daily Prophet News Network, is going less well, probably because the Daily Prophet has better lawyers then the Ministry. However, as I'm not spending the summer in Kent as the reporter and the paper reported last week, it should be interesting to see how it turns out.

3\. The case of Black v. The Department of Magical Games and Sports, for my forced participation in the tournament, which is harder 'cause I won said tournament…

And the rest just kind of blurred into one. Basically, she's trying, but law takes time. Who knew?

There was one thing, though, so she could bring charges of slander and libel against Mr. Cornelius Fudge, Esq. I had to tell her about the resurrection ceremony, my duel with Voldemort (baring the strange connection of our wands), my escape – everything right up to Junior's confession and Fudge's outright denial – but I got it out. Remus, with his werewolf strength, held my hand the whole time. I wish I could have grown up with him or Sirius. Maybe just 'cause they're adults or something, they have this feeling of security that I'd gladly cling to all my days. Telling her about the dementors coming after me at Azkaban South was easier. It hurt less. Even if that trial was only a week away.

I've got to say, though, it's at times like this I feel like my life is something somebody else has dreamed up. I hope they're enjoying it, 'cause Merlin knows I'm not. Well, the part where I kissed Severus was nice – very nice, actually – but the bastards not said a word to me since, nor have I heard word that he's not been killed or brought truly back into the fold or… I worry all the time. About me. About him. I know he can take care of himself. That he's thirty-five and has been doing this for a lot longer than I've been alive…

Merlin, I hope he's okay.

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I'm under house arrest again. Enough said.

Well, no, maybe not. Because this house is old and stuffy and evil-looking with elf-heads on the walls and this portrait of Sirius's mum that keeps on screaming (I told Sirius just to tell her that he'd secretly been Voldemort's right hand the entire time, like everyone thought while he was in jail, to see if that would keep her quiet, but he wouldn't go for it as I was ushered upstairs) every time anyone passes and dust everywhere and is, by the way, housing an underground movement to rid the world of the monster I've unleashed. And all the Weasleys and Hermione have been here for who knows how long, because no one will tell me, despite the fact that I've seen Sirius's will this morning and know it'll be mine if anything happens to him and, rightly I feel, deserve to know what's going on in property I might one day own. It's all just so annoying. I mean, if they really wanted me to know something they could have told me somehow. I mean, hello, phones people? I doubt Death Eaters have the know-how to tap phone lines…

Calmly, I tried to explain this too them, "So you haven't been in the meetings, big deal! You've still been here, haven't you? You've still be together! Me, I've been stuck at Azkaban South for a month! Who had to get past dragons and sphinxes and every other foul thing last year? Who saw him come back? Who had to escape from him? Who ended up cursing Edward Rosier to bits? Me! But why should I know what's going on? Why should anyone bother to tell me what's been happening?" I tried again. "I just want to know that something is going on to deal with my stupid, senseless mistake, alright?"

It, of course, wasn't alright. Hermione got all weepy and Ron all defensive, then Ginny and The Twins had to offer their two Knuts, and, Merlin, it's like my life is everybody else's business but those whose I want it to be. I'm going to have to get a shrink one of these days if I have to keep dealing with my friends. Too bad that'd probably ruin my case against Fudge. Damn bowler-hat-wearing ministers.

They were talking about a way to listen in on the meetings, and how they'd recently been found out. "Shame. I really fancied find out what old Snape's been up to," Twin A said.

"Snape?" I jump to my feet and started towards the door, totally forgetting whatever it was I'd been thinking of a moment before. That meant he was still alive. Which meant Voldemort hadn't done anything bad enough where he might get killed yet. Which meant- "Is he here?"

"Yeah. Giving a report. Top secret."

Well that settled it. My hand was on the knob when Hermione asked – no, more of demanded – "What's going on between you and Snape?"

"Licentious sex," I told her, turning the knob and finding my elbows grasped, pulling me back into the room and forcing me to sit down, having been pulled me onto one of the creaky beds therein by The Twins, who were currently demanding that I, and I quote, "dish."

"Like, tell us, like, totally everything-" said Twin A in a girly squeal.

"-is he open to foursomes?" asked the other. I looked at him funny before the other continued:

"-is it true he eats small children for breakfast, or does he always kick you out before then?"

"-boxers or briefs?" Well, that one I could answer, but only because I'd crashed in his room those three days waiting for him to return. Not that I'd tell them that.

"-and, truly, is it the size of his inflated ego, or the technique?"

"No. No. Briefs, and technique, defiantly," I shared, doing my best to answer in the same high-pitched squeal The Twins had asked with.

Hermione, now resembling spaghetti sauce and apparently having believed everything I said, "You- you didn't-?"

"Oh God no, 'Mione." I've only just kissed the man. Once. There's an order you do these things in. If he doesn't get himself killed first…

"Still, you seemed to spend a lot of time with him last year."

"Yeah, so? I spent a lot of time with Remus when he was teaching too."

Ron, now no longer quite so apoplectic beside Hermione on the other bed, "Why'd you want to spend so much time with that git anyway?"

"He's not so bad-"

As if I was a very small child with a mental issue, "He's a Death Eater, Harry – he's killed people."

"So? So have I, or were you not listening a second ago?"

"That's not the same-"

"Isn't it? And please, I've asked you not to call me Harry. It's a stupid name. My name's Éléonore and I'd like to be called by it for once."

Ginny chose to break the resultant tension a moment later by adding that "suspected" Death Eater Walden Macnair was walking around short one arm, supposedly the result of an injury obtained during the annual Running of the Manticores in Greece.

"Why'd anyone want to be chased by a Manticore," I ask, forgetting about Snape and Voldemort for a moment, "let alone annually?"

"It's something the Ottoman Ministry does with their high-security prisoners, but they let some people do it for sport if they sign a waver."

"People do it for sport?" I ask again, but no one seems to get my outrage, too outraged as they are by the whole Potter-Snape issue that almost makes me wish I'd never taken my outer robe off that day in Potions. Almost. It's not like I'm, I dunno, making-out with all our teachers. I really fail to see what their problem is.

"So, I may-or-may-not have been responsible for the transhumeral amputation of Macnair and most assuredly cursed Edward Rosier into matchbox-sized pieces," even saying this vaguely sickened me. "You don't have a problem with me."

"That's not the point."

"Isn't it?" I was getting seriously confused now as to what the point here might be and was considering asking them to wait while I got a quill and parchment and wrote a map to this conversation.

"The point is you've been frenching the git and we're worried about you, okay."

Laughing wasn't the smartest thing to have done at that point, I admit, but I couldn't help it. "I've never once frenched Snape," I told Ron truthfully and wondered where my friends got these ideas from. Okay, so maybe I had kissed the man, so it wasn't so outlandish, but still. Friends of little faith! They didn't understand that you can't help who you fall in love with. I could try to explain, to quantify things that can't be explained – like the power of his voice, how safe I feel with him or the fact that he's nice to me and lets me yell at him without giving me the third through (I discreetly counted the occupants in the room) eighth degree – but that would only belittle the emotion. And calling him a git is totally out of line – Ron himself hasn't been exactly the most well-mannered, easy-to-get-along-with wizard either.

Our argument was interrupted by Mrs. Weasley coming in and telling us to wash up for dinner. Glad to be rid of the questionings (which I largely ignored), I made my morose way down the stairs. A gaggle of wizards and witches in the oddest mixture of clothing I've ever seen – wizarding, Medieval, and modern – was on its way past Mrs. Black's screaming portrait and out the front door, so I leaned between the leering heads of dead house elves waiting for them patiently to pass. A few I recognized, but most I didn't. I tried to memorize their faces, but failed utterly, for shortly Severus came into view.

My mood brightened instantly. He looked healthy enough, if a little tired around the edges. Rather then head straight out the door as I feared he would do, the Potions Master ducked through one of the small side doors. When the crowd was clear enough, I did the same.

The room had once been a parlour, I think. All the furniture in the room was covered with white dust cloth, but fancy wooden feet poked out from under most. A tarnished silver tea set sat upon a glass table greyed-over with age. Several china figures rested on the mantle of the large fireplace; china cabinets all around showed off not Dark wares but dishes. It was a very feminine room, probably belonging to a Mrs. Black of some time back, kept like this for Grey officials from the Ministry and their spouses.

He was standing, facing the dark fireplace. The room was black, but he was a darker figure in the shadows, utterly Byronic as he leaned an arm against the mantelpiece, dark eyes studying imaginary flames within. Instantly a thousand imagining's of a love-sick schoolgirl were crushed by the sheer immensity of his presence, pained as it was. I knew he would not turn around, take me up in his arms, and kiss me with maddening intensity. I knew he would never confess love to me on bended knee, or tell me how god-damn much he missed me. I knew I would never do he same. I simply closed the door behind me, turned the lock, and took a single step deeper into the room. "You're still alive," I said slowly, trying to stay calm.

"Yes," he answered. There was a strange, strained quality to his voice. I couldn't place the emotion it might betray, or if it was merely a conglomeration of exhaustion, torture, and emotional numbness.

I moved a step closer. "I was worried about you."

Even he doesn't sound convinced by his words when he says, "I wish you hadn't been."

Again, a step nearer. "Don't say that."

"Do you know what Legilimency is, Éléonore?"

I thought back to the little Latin I'd picked up in school. "Something to send a mind away?" Maybe it was some kind of torture.

He chuckled as if I'd said something funny; perhaps I had. It was a weary chuckle. I wanted to ask him so badly how long since he'd had a proper meal, slept in a proper bed. He'd only get angry if I asked, though, so I didn't. "You're thinking of legare; it comes from legere. It's a form of what can loosely be called 'mind-reading.'" He seemed to find the idea of mind-reading distasteful, but it might have only been the term. Very few things, I'd observed, did the man actually think of as in bad taste.

"Voldemort knows legil-" the word caught on my tongue. I settled for, "it," to keep myself from sounding like a fool.

"Yes."

"You're worried that if… if we ever… amount to anything, he'll find out about it."

"Yes."

I was suddenly very, inexplicably cold. "There have to be other spies-"

"None who have been with him since, well, not the beginning, but close enough to matter. None in the Inner Circle save me."

"I know where you're going with this," I knew very well. He was going to give some speech more noble then I'd ever expect from any of his house and tell me that, for my own protection, we couldn't ever let ourselves amount to anything. I wasn't having it, "but it's not going to work. He already wants me dead and, if he finds out what you are, he'll be out for your blood too. There's no additional risk-"

"I don't think you quite understand." He was quite studiously looking away from me.

"Then explain it to me, Severus." I was still separated from him by the grubby length of coffee table. This was not how I expected our reunion to go. Granted, I'd not imagined it would be a field of tulips or anything, but I'd expected him to be glad I was safe and to kiss me some. Nothing much. I knew I was recently fifteen and he was still my professor. I knew it wasn't like we were going to elope together or anything. But I'd expected to get more then one (wonderful) kiss before the affair ended.

He turned and looked at me then, taking a step away from that dark fireplace. A light from somewhere – the crack under the door perhaps, or the thick, doxy-infested curtains – was enough to illuminate his features for me to make out the pain it took him to speak next. Snape would never be beautiful, but he was handsome in his own way. Like… well, I can't think of a good example, but I don't expect him to be. So his nose may have been broken once or twice and he'd more then passing resemblance to a bat (I expect this last bit was contrived intentionally), I don't care. I realize I'm no great beauty either. "There – there is a way, to keep a Legilimens from seeing your thoughts, a practice called Occlumency, and I am quite a talented Occlumens."

I refused to let the happiness I felt at the thought his mind's contents wouldn't be ripped from his head anytime soon overwhelm me. "I'm failing to see the problem here."

"The problem, Éléonore, is that I can hide my hatred of Voldemort quite easily. I can hide my allegiance to this Order with little more difficulty. However, what- what I feel for you has a strength that I cannot hide well, even now, and I fear that if we let it progress…"

I felt the pedestal of hope I'd built myself crumble away at this most wonderful thing anyone's ever said to me. "Don't you owe it to yourself to be happy? I know it's my own stupid fault Voldemort returned and everyone is just trying to clean up my mistake-"

"The Dark Lord would have found a way to return with or without you; it's always only been a matter of time."

Knowing I sounded petulant, "Then what's the problem?" I wanted no one to take away this happiness I'd found.

"The problem is I need to you to be safe!"

"I'll never be safe again, Severus."

"Which is why we should part ways and then, once this is all done, maybe…" he started around the table, moving towards the door and passing very close to me.

"We could be dead by then."

"We both had to know this could never work – if The Ministry or the Governors find out, it'd be the end for both of us – that it was impractical."

"Screw the Ministry and the Governors."

"You deserve-"

I grabbed his shirt, spinning him to face me, "Why don't you understand it yet? I. Don't. Care. I want you." I pressed my lips to his violently this time, and he responded in kind, plundering my mouth in a way Ron would have turned green to think of, and forcing me to a place past breathless. I released one hand from his shirt to tangle into his hair, another to clutch him closer to me, acting only on instincts and my gleanings from four years of sleeping in the same dorm as Lavender and Parvati, devourers of the Harlequin romance.

Severus didn't seem to care any longer either, for the next instant I felt myself pulled off my feet as he lifted me to him – and what could I do but wrap my legs around his waist and feel the powerful muscles under his black robes? – our hips meeting at a very nice place. His mouth was warm and I don't even know words to describe it, only that it was wonderful and when a moment later I felt my back pressed against that cold marble mantle and heard the chinking of china, that this left a hand free for him to cup my backside underneath the feeble cover of my miniskirt.

My hands got carried away with themselves, one slipping under his shirt, feeling the scarred, impossibly warm skin. I felt myself gasp for air as he halted his attack on my mouth to kiss my jaw, my neck, the curve of my shoulder… and I whispered into his ear, "I love you," as I tried to lift his shirt higher.

He released me to my feet then and, with an unbelievable amount of mustered dignity, told me in no uncertain terms, "Don't love me," and walked out of the room, leaving it somehow both brighter then before and unbearably empty, ghosts of his touches burning on my skin.

"Merlin!" I shouted, punching my hand ineffectually into the mantle, feeling far from sated and confused and wishing for a mother or someone to talk to about my bizarre romantic entanglement.

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"Don't know what you're complaining about. Personally, Éléonore, I'd have welcomed a dementor attack. A deadly struggle for my soul would have broken the monotony nicely."

I gave him a glare that said, "You-know-what-I-hear-every-time-one-comes-near,-right?" and thought to myself I'd rather have preferred the nice… rouler une pelle… I'd just had with Severus to break the monotony instead, but, wisely, kept this to myself. "Well," I said at last, when it seemed I had to say something. He was, after all, my godfather, and when he wasn't saying crazy things I rather liked him, "at least you've known what's been going on."

"Oh yeah," he said sarcastically. "Listening to Snape's reports, having to take all his snide hints that he's been out there risking his life while I'm sat on my backside here having a nice comfortable time… asking me how the cleaning's going-"

Ginny chose that moment to interrupt, slipping a plate between Sirius's elbows, "I'd not insult Snape in front of Harry; Hermione thinks she's got a thing for him," she handed me a plate with a wink and walked off to get silverware. Why do I have to have friends who take an active interest in my life? Why?

"What?" he howled.

Why can't we all just get along? "Sirius-"

"Is that greasy-haired bastard still here? I'm going to-"

"No, he's not and please don't-"

The last scion of The Ancient and Most Noble House of Black examined me closely as if looking for evidence of what I'd just been doing, "I know you've been through a lot, but by Merlin's baggy Y-fronts-"

"If you'll just calm down-"

"Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Black Potter, we're talking about Snivellus," he slammed his hand upon the table, appeared pleased when it cracked, and continued, "and I forbid you from thinking thoughts of that – gross and unspeakable – nature about him."

"He's not that bad-" Thank you, Ginny. Thank you very much. See if I don't fill your bed with tapioca tonight why don't you.

"Are we talking about the same Snape here?" he asked incredulous.

"There's not a 'Black' in my name," I point out, trying to think of a way out.

"Consider yourself adopted. But, really, please tell me this is somebody's idea of a sick joke."

For a moment he looked hopeful. Then, as my silence stretched on and I became aware the gang from upstairs was listening in, I deflected, "So, what's this Order been up to?"

"Éléonore…"

"Now, Sirius-"

"I think I'm the adult here, Éléonore. What's the deal?"

This left me with only a limited number of options: the truth or an all out lie. I chose the third: "Did you know Tonks likes Remus?"

I heard my former professor cough into his butterbeer and, feeling only slightly guilty as Sirius turned towards his cousin, ran out of the room, thinking how, even if I manage to get rid of our Voldemort problem, I'm still probably joining him in Hell.


	11. In Which I Am Assaulted by Middle-Aged Mutant Bureaucratic Frogs

Let me say it again: Tonks is totally the coolest person on earth and, while she says she won't take me to get a tattoo, it's only because she's been working days for the Ministry and nights for the Order, meaning that none of the good places are actually open when she's awake and available. That, and Sirius has forbidden me from leaving the house, which isn't exactly hard because there's nowhere to go and I'd have to have an armed guard or something, but is still totally annoying. I've told him that there's nothing but friendship going on between Snape and me, but that's, "bad enough," according to him, though maybe he can sense I'm lying to him, because there is something more then friendship going on between the last member of The Most Exalted House of Prince and myself. Granted, I don't know what it is, but when you make-out with a professor in your escaped convict godfather's house, there's something going on.

We were tackling the ghoul who was living in the upstairs bath together – metal colanders on our heads (hers was tangerine today), wand in her hand, kitchen tongs and spatula in mine – when, out of nowhere, she asks, "So, you and Snape, huh? I always thought he'd have a thing for one of his students one day."

My tongs, naturally, clattered onto the tile floor, both of us struggling to sit on the box we'd forced the ghoul into to stay shut long enough for Tonks to close the catches. The trunk bucked a little beneath us, and a hand managed to sneak out, scratching my arm in the process. "It's – er – nothing." I supplied frantically.

"You don't just tell a room full of Weasleys and my cousin that I've the hots for a certain werewolf if it's nothing."

"Yeah, er, sorry about that."

She shrugged it off, stinging the hand that had scratched me enough to get one of the clasps shut. "It got Remus to notice me, at least. He's been meticulously avoiding me since Thursday – no, that's a good thing. It means he sees something he thinks he should avoid. I just have to wear him down."

"Good luck with that," we managed the second catch with a grunt and slunk off the trunk in relief. "They can be quite persistent in protecting us from themselves," I offered then. "'Brilliant but damned,' or something like that. I think their mothers read too much Brontë when they were pregnant."

"Ha!" she yelled, possibly because she'd just managed to padlock the trunk to the sink pedestal, tripping only twice over her own feet. Way cool, yes, but dead clumsy. She's the kind of person you'd think would have a collection of all the lost ballpoints and socks-lost-in-the-wash hiding under her bed and would never know it. "I knew it! Éléonore and Snape, sitting in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G."

At least, I thought wryly, removing my colander helmet and chasing after the auror, she was using my proper name.

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ArietisCauldwell, though, could give her a run for her money. Before the trial she was all business, reminding me how the judge had to know as well as I did that the charges brought against me were frivolous, stupid, and generally an over-reaction based off of Fudge's slanderous claims about me being an attention-seeking, mentally-unstable fifteen-year-old. This was after, of course, that I'd spent half-an-hour explaining to Sirius that, yes, I thought it might be a good idea to be present at my disciplinary hearing and that, no, I wasn't going to sneak off and meet Snape. I swear, for a guy who (so I've been informed) serial dated in a way that could make some American movie stars cringe, he's a downright prude when it comes to the thought of his (god)daughter – for he's recently taking to dropping the first syllable, which makes me wonder if I'm suddenly going to receive an owl from Ari informing me that I've been adopted, which I'm not sure a criminal on the run can do. I must look into this – in a romantic entanglement with anybody, let alone his most-hated enemy.

He's begun talking to me about nunneries.

My bodyguards today are Tonks (who keeps on teasing me, but in a big-sisterly way that I rather wish everyone else would adopt if we have to talk about it at all) and Fleur. Yes, I know, Fleur. She's found herself a job at Gringotts and is like so totally going out with Bill this Friday. I'd tease her about it too, but she seems to really like him, especially since she had to work to catch him as he just didn't tumble over himself to ask her out once she turned on the old Veela charm. Of course, Fleur keeps telling Tonks that that colour yellow and that shade of magenta don't go in any sort of pleasing combination together, but I don't think Tonks will consent to being a project as easily as I did. It's hilarious to watch though.

For some reason my 'hearing' ended up held before a full gathering of the wizengamot. I was fully acquitted, of course, but not before Ari got in some wonderful verbal blows. At one point a woman who looked like a cross between Uncle Vernon and a frog with a voice that reminded me of the "questioning" The Twins had given me on Thursday, accused, "I'm sure I must have misunderstood you, Mrs. Cauldwell. So silly of me, but it sounded for a teensy moment as though you were suggesting that the Ministry of Magic had ordered an attack on this girl!" With that one statement she rubbed me the wrong way enough to make me wish she'd slept her way to the top so no one would ever have to say they honestly thought she deserved in her own right to be the Minister's Undersecretary.

"Why, Madam Umbridge, I'm claiming no such thing. What I meant to say is that somebody in the Ministry of Magic ordered an attack on Miss Potter on He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's request." She then brought into evidence a transcript of he interview (which is appearing in The WNN's Smoke and Mirror, International Wizarding Post, and their wireless broadcast "Who's Saying What?" tonight) of me on what happened the night of the third task. She then went on to laude me as, "The brave messenger who refused to be shot," nominated me for an Order of Merlin, and claim that the entire Fudge administration was allowing the Dark to win by not preparing while there was still time.

Like I said, I was naturally acquitted, and so the four of us girls laughed over the whole thing with lunch at a place Tonks knew on Diagon.

"I don't understand," I shared with the group after our food had arrived and the waiter (having gotten over the fact The- Girl-Who-Lived was one of his customers) disappeared, "is why Fudge thinks he can just pretend Voldemort hasn't returned. It's not like they can hide the evidence forever. I've tried to watch the Muggle news and there hasn't been anything that looks like him yet, no funny deaths or anything-"

Fleur was quick with a proximity charm and a cone of silence about our table. I wish I could have gone with her to France for the start of the summer.

"There's been nothing suspicious yet, that we know of," Tonks offered, passing me a basket of rolls.

"And we know quite a lot. More zen 'e knows, anyway."

"Been lying low, you see," Ari said then, looking by far younger then she'd in the courtroom. She was younger then Remus and Sirius and Severus, I suddenly realized; younger then my parents would have been, if only by one year. Yet in some way I could not describe she always seemed older to me, despite my werewolf friend's unseasonable grey hairs, in that way that almost said that, while she had loved my parents very dearly, she had moved on, had created a life for herself out of the ashes of that Halloween. She was just now delving into the war which, for these three men, had never ended. It made her seem terribly young to me at that instant, as young as Tonks and Fleur, and, possibly, quite younger then myself. I was ancient in my own mind, for while I understood that, yes, Ari had two kids near my age and, yes, Tonks was an auror and probably had seen some nasty things in her line of work and, yes, Fleur had been a champion with me and faced a dragon and grindylows and that horrid maze, but… But I had killed (and possibly maimed) at least one person, I had seen the bastard return, I had seen a boy, a handsome boy who would never age and who I would eventually grow older then as he remained a stagnant memory in his poor parents' minds… I wanted to be young and clasped at moments like these, but I knew already that there was something they were not saying, something they feared to share… something that, because I had been the fool who'd let him take my blood, I'd have to see him dead. "His comeback didn't come off quite the way he wanted. Only his Death Eaters were supposed to ever know he'd returned."

"You escaped, Alexandrie-Margaux, and within ze 'our ze Order was reformed."

"And, if there's one thing old Mouldy-Pants can't stand, it's seeing his plans foiled. He's quite like Fudge that way, actually."

Ari glared at Tonks's nickname, but, with a sigh as she speared a steamed carrot with rather more force then was necessary, "They both have a temper of a two-year-old."

"I think that ez being too kind to two-year-olds: Gabrielle was quite a well-behaved baby."

"Still," I tried again, trying to imagine what a well-behaved part-Veela might be like, "He's gotta be recruiting – it'll have to come out eventually. I understand he's not hosting dinner parties or handing out leaflets on Diagon, but he's gotta try recruiting the wrong person at the wrong time, or something."

"'E's got other plans, Alexandrie-Margaux-"

"Right big nasty ones," Tonks interrupted.

Only Fleur could look as haughtily at a person as she looked at Tonks then. Tonks, obligingly, changed her hair from pink to the silvery-blonde that the French girl sported, shaping her nose and colouring her eyes grey at the same time. "As I was saying… 'E is after something dangerous, something worse and more powerful zen 'e 'ad before. I don't know what," she added quickly at my questioning glare.

"Nor I."

"Don't look at me – I only know we don't want him to get whatever it is. I think only Dumbledore knows what is there that we don't want him near." Tonks held one hand at table level and another near the top of her very blonde head. "This is the totem pole," she moved one of her hands underneath the table cloth, "and this is where I fall on it."

"Well, Nymphie dear-"

In her auror voice, "ArietisIphygenieCauldwell, if you call me 'Nymphie' again I will be forced to castrate your husband."

I don't know why Ari did it, but she called Tonks Nymphie again, and battle ensued. Fleur and I did our best to stay out of their way, but before long a spell went astray and caused her perfect blonde hair to stand on end, and, well, let's just say that, no matter how available I am according to Star and Stave (a Daily Prophet News Network printing) after breaking up with long-time beau Osiris O'Malley backstage at the Haz-Mat's Dublin concert, I'm not likely to be invited back any time soon.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

While the Smoke and Mirror and International Wizarding Post may have first printed the story, headlines such as:

Potter Tells It All

British Dark Lord Returned?

and

J'Accuse!

Ministry Cover-up Revealed

appeared over the next three weeks on every newspaper not connected to the Daily Prophet or its News Network reprinted my interview, editorials and columns discussing whether or not such a thing as Voldemort's return was possible or even probable were printed, Mental Healers and various other specialists were interviewed to establish or contest my mental health; and my exploits over the last four years published, lauded, critiqued, and dissected for possible Dark-entanglements. If it wasn't so annoying, it would have been amusing to see my name in print everywhere – correctly as it were – and hoping to Merlin that Snape was off doing something for Voldemort or Dumbledore that involved him having to walk past nearly every newsstand in existence. Also, because it seems unlikely I'd have expressed a desire to go into a Death Eater's custody, it seems the Ministry has been contacting Ari about settling Black v. DMJ out of court, making Sirius a free man at last.

There were, of course, several very unpleasant things about this. For instance, Sirius has been framing the most daring, most amusing, and stupidest articles from the various papers and hanging them in the stairwell where the elf heads used to sit. I feel kind of bad for getting angry with him as we prepared to leave for the station – with Wormtail on the Dark side, his secret was probably plastered all over Death Eater HQ – but I think he only wanted to come along in case Snape made an entrance.

"Merlin, Sirius! Can't you just trust me, okay? I fought Voldemort; I don't think fending off advances from unwanted suitors should be too much of a problem!"

"It's not the unwanted ones that worry me, Éléonore," he said darkly, extolling to me the virtues of a monastery in the Himalayas that a few of his squib relations had been sent to for Merlin-knows how long when they needed to be carefully gotten out of the public eye. "My Great-Uncle Marius spent the last sixty years of his life there, very comfortably I'm given to understand – it was a fact that annoyed my grandfather to no end; he'd always rather hoped his brother would die and get the whole problem over with – and only a couple days away by portkey."

"I'm not going into a nunnery, Sirius!"

"Well how about a nice arranged marriage? There are plenty of Weasley boys-"

"Sirius!" I shouted again, dropping my trunk (which I'd been trying to get out the door, a fact made harder since Sirius would not move out of the way) on his toes. "What is your problem? So Snape and I get along," and have exchanged saliva and he apparently cares enough about me to have studiously avoided me since my arrival even though he must know I'm not going to give in that easily. I mean, he'd never pull one of these things Sirius is doing to me now. So Sirius didn't like Severus? For all he knew she and Snape just got along, big deal. Okay, so maybe if he knew the truth I could see him being a tiny bit angry – the age difference is a little extreme on the outside, I admit – but this is a little extreme. "So help your magic, Sirius Black, if you try to marry me off to any of the Weasleys I- I- well, I don't know what I'll do, but it won't be pretty." I hoisted by trunk up and shoved passed him. "I love you to pieces, Sirius, but this obsession with yours is getting out of hand. Buy a chew toy or something."

"Are you sure? What about that second one, what's his name, Charlie? You got on with him at the first task, didn't you?" he continued unperturbed.

Blandly, "I'd just outflown his dragon."

"See, what did I say? What about him?"

"No!"

We made our way down the stairs amidst glass-framed newspapers (in eight European languages and three from the Sino-Japanese Empire) proclaiming that I'd claimed to have witnessed a Dark Lord's return. "Okay then, no Weasleys. You went to the ball with that Longbottom boy, right? Frank and Alice's kid-?"

"I'm not marrying Neville either!" I shouted reaching the final landing, throwing my trunk down as best as one can throw a trunk and asking Ginny, who was sitting on one, where The Twins were.

Like the devil, they appeared. Pointing a dangerous finger at the pair, I asked, "You two have always wanted to know who made the map, right?" They nodded, confused. I admit I wasn't making the best sense, but Sirius had gotten me very angry. I swear, I was doing fine enough on my own for the last dozen or so years. Maybe not the best, yes, but I'd been doing it. I suddenly did not need godfather's showing up that wanted me to marry Neville Longbottom so he'd not have to worry about me liking Snape, even if it meant staying at Azkaban South for an extra summer! I turned an excusatory finger on said godfather. "This one here's Padfoot."

"Is it true, Fred?" asked the twin on the left wearing a hideous yellow "F" T-Shirt

The other was wearing an identical "F" T-Shirt shirt and responded, "I do think so. Ickle-Harrikins wouldn't lie to us about the Grandfathers of the Gag-"

"-the Ancestors of the Antic-"

"-the Sultans of the Shenanigan-"

"-the Fathers of the Fart Joke, would you Harry?"

I tried my best to look honest and failed, looking instead furious. "Sirius, Padfoot. Remus, Moony. Dad, Prongs."

The left twin leapt and Sirius and enveloped his legs in a strange hug. The right twin did the same to my legs and proceeded to kiss my shoes. Together they cried, "We are not worthy!"

At Sirius's feet, "Padfoot, Prince of the Prank!"

"Only spawn of Marauder!" went the one at my feet.

"To think-"

"-that we have-"

"-been sitting at the feet of-"

"-the fountain of knowledge all this time-"

"-and never knew it."

"Please, oh mighty Padfoot-"

"-and blessed spawn-"

"-bestow upon us your wisdom!"

It was into this situation Mrs. Weasley entered.

Okay, so I am a little sorry that I got him in trouble (he was giving The Twins ideas, you see), but he mostly deserved it. I wish I could say the same about the whispers that followed me – that I deserved it – but most of them were uncharitable for, like it or not, the DPNN was the most-read in England and contained such lofty publications as the Daily Prophet (today's headline: "Attempted Break-in at Ministry!"), Witch Weekly ("Can a Toadstool Change Its Stalk?"), and Star and Stave ("What You Missed at the 551st Annual Wizarding Music Awards"), and, despite the popularity of my interview, most people had only read the synopses of the editorials, at least among my classmates.

I don't know how I managed to make it through the Welcoming Feast and that wonderful discovery that the frog-woman is to be the new DADA teacher. I can't remember most of it, so I think I intentionally zoned out of the whole thing. I really did miss having Fleur and the S's there with me, though apparently the new scandal is that Sylvie ran off with another one of the Beauxbatons's delegation, Alain, and eloped in Tijuana. I could be enjoying a nice, homemade meal at HQ with whatever members of the Order plus Sirius have managed to show up in time and listening to Fleur fill me in with all the juicy details against my will, but no, I had to show Fudge up and not get expelled.

Granted, Sirius would probably be trying to figure out who he could marry me off to so he doesn't have to worry about having Snape as a godson-in-law. He suggests one of the Prince of Wales's sons – apparently the Blacks have "connections" or something – and that gave me pause, but still. It might be nicer then all these whispers I've had to deal with here. Besides, people are still calling me Harry. Can you imagine it? Prince Harry and Princess Harry? Oh Merlin. I hate my life today.

As the last member of the Most Dignified and Decorous House of Potier (per the French), my life would, in other times, I expect, have been filled with nice, pleasant things. Maybe horse riding and archery, maybe more annoying balls or more annoying arranged marriages to consider, yes, but it'd had to have gone better then today.

I mean, really. I had HoM first thing, which wasn't so bad as I was able to ignore most the whispers and reading one of Ye Olde Law books Ari gave me when she found out I was interested in it, law that was. The one I'm on now is on the legal status of non-human non-beasts, i.e. werewolves, centaurs, merpeople, and the like. A little dry, a little strange, yes, but not bad.

Bad was Potions that came after. And I don't just mean the usual Snape bad. I mean a downright evil, I've-been-tortured-using-the-Cruciatus-Curse-a-number-of-times-this-summer-so-I'll-torture-you-now sort of bad. My heart bled for the man, it really did. I'd have gladly have jumped his bones (as soon as I've found a non-Weasley provided Prophylactic Potion; Mrs. Weasley had stuck another recipe in my school shoes, I discovered this morning. Tonks, having a Muggle-born father, had put a whole box – do you need to even guess of what? – and a bottle of "special" lotion in with my potions supplies; luckily, I opened the box this morning in my dorm to check that I had everything before heading to breakfast. Why does this sort of thing happen to me? Though I suppose I did deserve it from Tonks…) if I thought he'd let me, because he does have that really nice way of kissing… Still, that was no reason to take it out on us.

"Miss Potter," he asked about five minutes from the end of lesson, having already vanished something from Neville's cauldron and taken fifteen points from Parvati, "what is that supposed to be?" Obviously he was taking the whole I-must-hate-you-to-protect-you thing to heart. Men! If I didn't like them so much I'd say get rid of them.

Okay, the smoke was grey instead of silver. Ron's was green though. Pick on him instead! "The Draught of Peace, sir," I offered, doing my best Percy impression.

"Tell me, Miss Potter, can you read?"

"Usually, sir. My sight usually takes Friday nights off, but my hearing had a date and so they switched days."

Pity he wasn't amused. At least he didn't give me detention. We both knew what that would mean.

Divs was almost worse, believe that? We're talking about dreams now; have to keep a diary of them and everything. I'm sure I can make something up – it's have I've been doing Divination for years – but the very idea of keeping a dream diary is just ludicrous. I have about four standard dreams and they, in order of popularity, are: the graveyard, Halloween '81; a random Death Eater soirée in which Severus is tortured, murdered, and disassembled throughout London; and the more pleasant ones wherein said former Death Eater is doing very pleasant, unadvisable things for a professor to do with a student. I think the meanings are very straightforward, thank you Professor Bug-Eyes, and if one or the other for some reason means I'm going to be eaten by a giant bowl of tapioca pudding in revenge or something, I, frankly, don't need to know. I should never have taken the stupid class, but I was young and naïve then, and frankly thought that knowing the future might be helpful in my line of trouble-getting-into, but, as apparently it's an unteachable subject, all I've learned are some handy ways to lie and die.

Worst was DADA with Professor I'm-an-Overgrown-Frog. Hermione, about two seconds before I got to that point in the ridiculously long class syllabus (two weeks on the differences between jinxes and counter-jinxes, I swear), asked why there was nothing on using magic in a class on defence against Dark magic in a school that thought witchcraft and wizardry. Talking about using defensive magic in a "secure and risk-free" way was like saying Voldemort was only dangerous if you were a piece of toast: which is to say, the more time I spent around this woman, the more I thought about practising my list of spells to use on the Dursleys after I turn seventeen on her. Going on about how Remus was a "dangerous and unstable half-breed" and fake-Moody a "dangerous and unstable madman" and that the sun shone out of Lockhart's arse, yes, but he'd not been prepared for the rigours of teaching, I felt my fists clench.

I promised myself I wouldn't say anything. I promised myself I wouldn't attack her in front of other students. I promised myself I would-

Yeah, I failed. "And what good's theory going to be in the real world?" I asked at last, through teeth clenched and threatening to crack.

"This is school, Miss Potter, not the real world."

"Oh? Really? When did that happen?" I seemed to recall a number of things that had happened to me here that translated to the "real" world.

"Let me make one thing quite plain to you, Miss Potter, and the rest of you as well. You seem to think that a certain Dark Wizard is at large once more. This is a lie."

"We are thinking of the same Dark Wizard, aren't we? Red eyes, no nose, thinks killing Muggle-borns is nice sport?"

"I repeat: this is a lie-"

I lost my temper. "Tell that to Cedric Diggory and Edward Roiser. They didn't exactly drop dead of their own accords."

"If you have any information on the disappearance of Mr. Roiser-"

"Oh, I dunno. Last time I saw him he was splattered across half a graveyard."

A hush fell over the classroom. Some had read my article, yes, but still most of them would have given their right arms to hear the words from my own mouth. Not that I'd mentioned this tiny little fact to the papers. "I do believe that you have earned yourself a detention, Miss Potter."

A detention? For splattering a Death Eater across a graveyard? I blinked at her. "And I do believe you are the worst liar since Lockhart I've had the distinct displeasure of meeting, but what can you do?"

"I believe you can make that detention for a week, Miss Potter."

"How nice for you." This frog-woman was obviously mentally ill.

I grabbed my bag and headed out of the room, with no intention of ever entering it again so long as she taught here. McGonagall, whose office I proceeded to march up to and demand what exactly they thought they were doing, hiring an overgrown frog like Umbridge, seemed to think DADA was an important class for me to take, and told me I had to report to those detentions and keep my mouth shut because, apparently, things weren't about truth or lies but keeping my temper or something as idiotic at that.

I wished Severus had given me detention instead. Even in the mood he was currently in, he'd be better company then scratching I must not tell lies into my hand night after night. I was rather torn, whether to tell or not, not wanting to appear weak to this ranine woman.

Whispers followed me around the halls for that entire week, and the entire week after during which I obtained another round of detentions for insisting Quirrel had been Voldemort's puppet and, therefore, like Junior a rather bad teacher. Snape continued to be vitriolic and I kept on having strange dreams of a dark corridor and high-pitched laughter and I couldn't sleep for more then an hour straight without fearing something was going wrong, that Remus or Sirius or Severus or Fleur or Tonks or a Weasley was going to be hurt in this war I could have prevented if only I'd been smarter or faster or died that Halloween. I was receiving almost daily owls from Sirius reminding me to behave myself, join a nunnery, or marry Prince Harry even though he's a little more younger than me then William would be.

I gave in one Thursday morning, intending to use my hand as an excuse. I go to the Runespoor that guarded his door, invisibility cloak tight about me, map in hand, butterflies in my stomach. I can see his dot in there. For some reason I have the idea if I could just see him, everything will be better. This is probably just another one of those dreams being in his presence will break. But I've really tried. I mean, I've tried to keep my temper with the frog-woman and failed, I've tried to look at other guys to get my mind off of him and keep on comparing everyone I think of to him, I've tried just to get through the night, but I can't, and so help me Merlin he's either going to break-up (is break-up the proper term for this? Were we ever really together?) with me properly or kiss me again. "Let me in," I demanded of it.

"He," said the first head, untangling from the rest.

"Forbidsss," said the second in a voice that reminded me of Luna Lovegood, darting upwards to look me in the eye.

"It," finished the critical third. "Were it not for that, Speaker," it continued, and I dimly remembered from my last, frantic visit, this head was called Edes.

Him, the second, picked up the thread again, "We would allow you accessss, but,"

"Even we cannot break an edict for a Speaker," finished Arc, the first head.

"Why has he forbidden it? I've got to see him-"

"He likes it when you visit," Him noticed dreamily, now staring at my left earlobe. "I'd let you in. You made him happy for a while."

"I think it was only the potionsss making him decent," Edes inserted with the air of one who is examining his fingernails. "Arc and Him have too much faith in his humanity."

"Venusss significat humanitam." Love shows humanity.

"Him and Edesss and myself will work on him."

"He cannot understand ussss, Arc."

"Arc meanssss we will send thoughtsss of kindnessss to him, Edesss. Wouldn't they make the darlingist mating-pair?"

I try to break into the conversation, but having one with a Runespoor, even at two in the morning (yes, I know, my hand excuse will never hold at this hour), is like having an argument with three different people all at once. Arc, Him, and Edes might share the same torso, but Arc is the planner of the group, Him the dreamer, and Edes the critic. It's enough to make my head spin, but I won't give up. I need to get in, and I won Him over last time. Only it would think Severus and anyone would be part of a darling anything.

"I think Arc and Him are both daft."

"I have dreamt of this one. I want to give it to her."

"Look here," I try again, then ask, "give me what?"

"It would be a plan, yessss. If we give it to her, we will see the Speaker many, many cyclesss."

"And there will be nestlingssss. Proper nestlingssss, not scale-less ones on two legssss."

"I do not like it."

"Edesss never likessss anything."

Arc was insistent, curling around the second, "It will work."

"I'd hope it will work," Him shared.

"It never will," Edes said darkly, glaring at me even as he wrapped around the middle head, who was now coughing with a vigour that I worried would call Filch to my position. I drew my cloak tighter around me.

Him spat a leathery, tiger-striped ball into my hand. "It isss for you, Speaker," he said, slowly curling around its fellows into a knot of snake-limbs. I looked carefully at what I held, snitch-sized and slowly pulsing with heat, and almost dropped it in alarm: a Runespoor egg.

Sirius was not going to like this.


	12. In Which I Become an Unwed Teenage Mother to a Three-Headed Snake

I sent Hedwig off with an owl-order for rainbow-striped lingerie to deliver to one N. Tonks with the assurance my dear owl would deliver it only when Remus was in the same room. Vengeance, oddly enough, didn't seem as sweet with a Runespoor egg tucked into my pocket.

How does one raise the hatchling pets of supposedly Dark wizards anyway? It's not like there are exactly a plethora of books on the subject, and even in most Bestiaries (and I think I looked through them all my third year for Buckbeak) have only a paragraph or so saying they are, "orange with black stripes," and the, "familiars of the Darkest of Wizards," another three or four talking about the various known Parselmouths to have conversed with them, and then a brief mention on the curious personalities of each head, and that's it. Runespoors are either too Dark to mention, too rare, or, in the odd case, not dangerous enough to bother with.

My journey from the dungeons to the owlery to the tower, I thought back over the entire conversation I'd had with the statue. For some reason giving me a Runespoor egg would have me around the statue, at least, for several, "cycles" – something to do with, "nestlings," but, from the way the various heads put it, I was given to thinking that they meant each head of the Runespoor was to be counted as its own, individual, nestling. I mean, even talking Runespoor statues don't try to set you up to get in the position to be impregnated by your older Potions Master.

And how, exactly, am I supposed to tell Sirius that I have a baby Runespoor to take care of? I'll have to tell him sometime – they tend to become quite large, I'm given to understand – and that of course leads the question of, "Éléonore, where did you get that usually-considered-Dark snake?" Lies, in this case, tend to lead to, "What were you doing in Knocturn?" or "Why were you drinking with a pair of hags and a vampire on a school night?" and so, at some point, my godfather is bound to find out that I was having a conversation with the statue in front of Severus's door. I mean, I only just got him to stop sending me pamphlets on that Himalayan monastery. I can just see myself telling him and suddenly I finding myself engaged to be married to His Royal Highness, the eleven-year-old Prince Henry Charles Albert David of Wales. Or Louis XX, King of Magical France, if he doesn't want to wait for Harry to come of age. Stupid patriarchal men. According to Ari, she dated Sirius for a week in her Fifth Year and at least three separate times her Sixth – one among many of his string of girlfriends those years – and he seemed to have no problem then ignoring the societal demands in which he'd grown up. It had been the '70s, though, but still.

All I wanted to do, I tell you, was see Severus, and now suddenly I'm about to become the unwed mother of a Runespoor hatchling. How, I ask you Fate, is that right? Is there a sign on my back that I can't see that says, "Hey, I'm down again, why don't you just kick me one more time?"

Okay. That was melodramatic. I must stop that.

I wish I could say I was fast asleep when I returned to the tower – usually, I must say, I'm dead on my feet by midnight, but ever since the graveyard I've been barely able to sleep. My nerves won't let me and are more then a little frayed, which is probably why I thought it was a good idea to try to see Severus in the wee hours of the morning. I can't recall ever feeling so tired or so old.

The fact that it's three in the morning and I'm still, reluctantly, awake when I return to the tower has ceased to surprise me. The fact that Ron and Hermione were waiting for me, a bowl of murtlap essence to one side, and a cuppa to the other, did. Just when I think my friends have gone off the deep end, they do something nice.

The blood had ceased flowing an hour or so before from my injured right hand, but it still felt nice – and not a little painful, to remember that Severus had done the same for my feet almost a year ago – to soak it in the slippery liquid. It wasn't their fault that I wished that someone else had provided the relief…

"I reckon you've got to complain about it this time – how many hours did she make you stay, mate? Nine?"

"I've written to Ari Cauldwell about it. According to her daughter-" Ari's youngest child, Alycone, had been sorted into Gryffindor, and was an odd sort: reverently interested in Quidditch, Charms, and Sino-Japanese comics, but amazingly uninterested in almost everything else, "there's not much that can be done since, amazingly, it's not illegal for her to have one, or even have a student use, so long as it's not in excess. She'll take it to trial after she finishes her current round of high profile cases against the Ministry… at least, that's what the note Alycone gave me said. Besides," I finished glumly, "I've had worse." After a Dark Lord's crucio, almost nothing compared. That didn't mean I liked having my hand sliced open night after night, but at least it was an obstacle I could, in time, conquer. My thoughts, now returned to that starless night, were a harder chain still to break… Just the merest thought of it and I spiralled into that dreaded sea…

… Cedric, so cold already as I fell atop his dead body…

… the horror as, unable to move or even scream, I witness the unbearably pale form rising from the stone cauldron, seeming to suck the night into him…

… my horror as, one by one, the echoes of the dead poured from his wand…

Hermione's words snap me out of my dark reverie. "She's an awful woman. Awful. We've got to do something about her."

"Have you thought of poison?" The third head of a Runespoor was supposed to be very, very deadly. I could probably get this one in my pocket to give me some when it hatched. Who knew how long that would take, or how long it had been in the statue? Well, the Runespoors of course, but the one in my pocket wasn't sharing and neither was the statue it had come from.

"I did," Ron said grimly, "but apparently there are such things as antidotes."

"Besides, Ronald," she huffed, "I meant something, something about what a dreadful teacher she is – you've been right from day one, Harry, we're not going to learn a thing that we can apply to the real world."

"We've already raided the library for spells for me last year, Hermione. We can't learn what we need from books anymore – we need a proper teacher." I doubt Severus, even if he was being nice to me again, would be willing to teach two other Gryffindors along side me. Nor, probably, would they take some of the borderline spells as well as I had. Damn him for suddenly becoming noble!

"That was my thought too."

"Yeah, but who could we get to teach us. Lupin's been the only good professor we had, but he's busy with the Order…"

"Well, who, then?" Ron racked his mind as I did mine, searching for Hermione's perfect DADA teacher. Tonks was out, especially when she received the multi-coloured lingerie I'd just ordered her. Sirius, though obviously not busy, was still considered a convict…

"Isn't if obvious?"

"Uh, no?"

She looked at me in a very predatory way I knew immediately I didn't like, "I'm talking about you, Harry."

I laughed at her.

Ron, surprisingly, looked pensive. "That's an idea."

"But-"

"You're right, Harry – you were right last year too. Tests and rules don't matter, not when it comes to staying alive. I mean, look at what you've done."

I thought. Stone, Basilisk, Dementors, Voldemort… "I don't like this." They were smiling like the kneazle who caught the puffskien. I really do hate it when people smile at me like this. "I mean… I didn't survive all those things because I was best at defence or smartest or anything but lucky… You don't… You don't know what it's like, fighting them, trying to stay alive. It's not brain or spells or instinct…" I raged at them, suddenly angry for no good reason that they couldn't understand while praying that they never would have to, "It's knowing that, if you fail, you're going to die, or be tortured, or both, and that's running through your mind while its also screaming at you every reason you have to live, why you shouldn't die that way, and how every noise around you is both super-sharp and blunted to your ears, and you keep on thinking of everything you did wrong rather then what to do now…"

…Wormtail, bleeding and broken but coming at me with that knife and with no way to stop him…

… searching the summoned crowd for a figure I could pick out in a dark room, could know by scent and sense alone, and hoping to nameless deities that he'd save me and that he'd not come…

My voice fell, then broke entirely as memory overtook me, "…just flinging whatever spell you can and hoping to Merlin or God or whatever that they hit something…" I ended, somewhat lamely. I dipped my free hand into my pocket, where the comforting warmth of the egg brushed against my hand and comforted me. I should have known something from Severus – even if it was given to me only by the statue that guarded his door, and that he'd probably never known had existed – would hold that same aura of age and solidity that so drew me to him in the first place.

"See, Harry? Can't you? That… everything you've just said… that's why you've got to do it… You're the only one who knows what it's really like, in the real world… going against him, V-Vol-Voldemort." I acquiesced, beginning to understand how I got into these stupid, ridiculous, and generally unpleasant situations.

Slowly I pulled my right hand from the murtlap, dried it on the front of my robes, and transferred the Runespoor egg into it. The pulse the egg gave off served further to ease the pain of everything. All I'd wanted, setting out from detention, was to see and maybe make-out with everybody's favourite Potions Master, get a little revenge on Tonks for the lubricant in my school things, maybe charm some tapioca into the suits of armour by the DADA classroom… but, no, I don't even get so much as a, "Go away, Potter," from the man whose existence helped keep me alive while fighting his former master, and an egg from a statue.

Fate is a vindictive witch and I love her.

"Harry," asked Ron as we walked to the stairwell, not vindictively at all, just curiously in his state of exhaustion, "what's that?"

What was the point of lying? "An egg." I was so tired.

"Odd looking, it. What is it, some strange tiger?"

"You'd think so, wouldn't you? Nah, it's just a Runespoor." Maybe if I don't make a big deal of it, it'll go away. And then I can get an hour of sleep before dreaming of odd hallways and nightmarish cackles.

Slowly, as if she were addressing a five-year-old, "Harry, where'd you get a Runespoor egg?"

"Archimedes."

"A dead mathematician gave you a Runespoor egg?"

I shake my head, resigned to the conversation, and move to my favourite armchair by the still-warm embers. "He's a statue of a Runespoor on the third level of the dungeons – well, they I suppose. Each head has a different name: Arc, Him, and Edes."

"So a statue named after a dead mathematician gave you a Runespoor egg?"

"Pretty much."

"Why?"

"Something about nestlings? I dunno. None of the heads were too clear on that." Talking to one was like being hung-over and trying to make sense of The Twins, only worse.

"And so you just took it? What if it's from V-Voldemort?"

I bristled at the idea. Not this egg. "I trust Archimedes. Things are copasetic between us." I held up two fingers and twisted them together in demonstration. "We're like this."

"You're 'copasetic' with a statue of a Runespoor?"

Why was she repeating everything I said? I closed my eyes and leaned back against the comfortable depths of the armchair. I'm so going to have to take this chair with me when I graduate. If I live that long. "I just think it's lonely. Gotta be tough being a talking statue that only so many people can understand…" Maybe there were cushioning charms on the chair to make it feel just that much better?

I shifted the weight of the egg in my hand and curled up tighter on the chair. I may not have known many things, but I knew, instinctively, this egg in my hand wasn't evil.

It wouldn't remain an egg forever. It would hatch at some point… and then I would have to take care of it… What do Runespoors eat, anyone? Anyone at all? And then each head would be like Archimedes, which meant that I would have another three insane people to deal with… and what would I name it, pray tell? These things just don't come with names – not that I know of.

Fate is a vindictive witch and I love her.

Oh, who am I kidding? I hate her guts. Least I know she hates mine.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

By next Monday the egg still hadn't hatched. The weekend had been a fervent mixture of meeting up with the (what, thirty?) people who wanted to, for some unknown reason, be taught DADA by me; searching the library for anything I could about Runespoors, and trying to get information out of Archimedes as well as get into the place he bared me from.

Our conversations every night that weekend had gone something like this:

"Let me in,"

"We."

"Cannot."

"Speaker. We have given."

"The nestlingsss to you."

"That isss enough, for now."

And then I'd ask about what I was supposed to do with the nestlings, and get the obscure answer from Him, "Love it," who never did seem to understand what it was I was asking.

Still, it was a comfort to have the egg, even if it was a weird, strange comfort that I almost didn't like having because, as much as I knew that very few things that were Dark were actually evil, and that I'd seen the Light itself bent to terrible purposes, it frightened me in a way I was no comfortable admitting that I felt any sort of reassurance around a thing that had once been the treasured pet of evil wizards. I hasten to say that, far from comfort, it was a maternal feeling, and even if my "child" were to turn out evil, I doubt I would ever have noticed until he slew someone right before me and couldn't come up with a reasonable answer why. How my aunt must have felt for my cousin, odd as that was. It helped with the dreams, of which a fifth had been added to the repertoire, one of a long, grey stone corridor with a single wooden door at the end, and made my waking less horrifying.

Still, on Monday I skipped HoM and went straight to McGonagall's office. "I'm dropping Umbridge's class."

She stared at me hard from underneath the wide brim of her hat. "You known as well as I, Miss Potter, why you cannot drop Defence." Yeah, the Voldemort thing. Not exactly forgotten that, you know. Kinda have his mark on my head and his people wanting to kill me – kinda hard to forget.

"I don't want to like drop it, not take the OWL or anything – Merlin, no. I'd like to do something of a self-study program. You know as well as I that Umbridge doesn't have any intention of teaching us anything then other then how to be good Ministry drones, and that I don't have any intention of going to her classes again. Every other word I end up saying to her lands me in detention, and let me just say, her quill is torture." I held my hand up to her, showing her where the words I must not tell lies have been permanently etched into my skin. "I've Ari working on it, but even with all of Dunn, Hastings, and McGully at my disposal, I've kinda got them swamped." I got a little worried then. "Maybe I should just buy another law firm…"

She gave a sigh and pinched the bridge of he nose. "You do have a penchant for making sure my life is never dull. Quite like your father and godfather that way."

"I'm nothing compared to Sirius," I insisted. "O, gingernewt," I saw in her tin of biscuits and helped myself.

"How's his trial going, by the way? I've been keeping up with it in the papers… but you know how they are."

"According to Ari, the Ministry's folding; they just haven't admitted it yet."

"I should've never-"

"From everything I've ever heard, Professor, the… the four of them were such good friends that it was all but impossible to imagine any one of them betraying the other. When Severus," she raised an eyebrow in that singularly professorial way some teachers have at my use of the name, but made no comment as she smiled softly, biting into her own gingernewt, "told you that someone was betraying Mum and Dad to Voldemort, it was so foreign, so bizarre, that I think it threw everyone for a loop. The fact that you never once thought it could have been any of them led you to suspect all of them when the betrayal was found with such a ferocity that all logic was lost in the process. Sirius… well, you know what his family was like, probably taught more then a few of them, and so it seemed to be possible that he could do something like that when my parents were found dead, even though it made no sense to suspect he'd bow before a master he'd eschewed long ago. Wormtail had the perfect cover, that gas line exploding thing he probably heard from Dad, and you'd no reason to ever doubt that he wasn't dead… Everything was so chaotic then, everyone just wanted to get it all over with, behind them, move on… It's not your fault. It's not anyone's fault, except Wormtail's.

"Now, granted, he should've had a trial, all the proper steps taken, but at least now it's coming to light. At least the truth is finally known."

McGonagall smiled at me then, one of those bitter similes I'm used to seeing on people who remember my parents when they look at me. My father's hair, my mother's eyes, the scar that won't stay covered by make-up or careful placement of hair – these things are superficial only. I wish that, for once, people would just look at me and see me. I've done some pretty extraordinary things mind, the Stone, Basilisk, Dementors… and the graveyard last year. I'd like someone to look at me and see that the fifteen-year-old witch in front of them is not ordinary, is not just another Lavender Brown or Hannah Abbot. Merlin above, when they look at me I want them to see a girl who had fifteen blissful months of life with parents the world worshiped before being shoved into a cupboard-under-the-stairs in Azkaban South and treated worse then a house elf; I want them to see the girl who made it out of that somehow alive enough to want to learn, caring enough to make friends and fight for them and risk everything for the world, though the world had long abandoned me. I want them to look at me and see Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Potter, who has lived through so much. Not my mother, or father, or The Girl-Who-Lived.

The only people who ever loved me, for me, were my parents. Sirius loves me – escaped an inescapable prison to save me – because I am his dead friends' daughter. Remus, too, because of dear, sweet Lily Potter and her dashing young prince, my father. My aunt hates me, because I am Mum's child. Need I go on? I won't. My thoughts depress me.

In all my life, only one man has ever seen that.

I am fifteen. Is it ridiculous to say that I'm in love?

Nevertheless, though, McGonagall gives me one of those smiles. She tells me that I'm my parents' daughter, and that I should be proud to be so. I am, truly so, but she's not the one who has to live with the knowledge that everything she ever does will be measured against them. Dad, she told me, worked for the Ministry. Mum was going to be a Mind Healer when she finished her schooling. How can I ever compare to them, no matter what I do?

Potions is vile, Umbridge asking a question a minute of Severus as she "inspects" his class. She makes it a point to inspect the other teachers during Fifth Year Gryffindor classes, with one of her sycophantic Ministry junior undersecretaries taking her classes while she does this. I hate her for it, the mutant frog. The truth… the woman would bury me for bringing her the truth.

Normally, I'd spend this time thinking of ways to turn her into a frog, but today I am distracted by Severus. I cannot bear the thoughts of what he must be going through, spying for Voldemort. I cannot bear the thought that he's risking his life with every meeting he attends and I'm sitting here in school, looking pretty and being ignored by those who should worry the most (because the innocent and ignorant are always in this world the first condemned), and not even being able to comfort him. Not that he probably needs much comforting, Severus being who he is, but patching him up and seeing him safe would be enough for me. I don't care if it's wrong of me to want to be near him just because I sense he knows me as I know me, I want to be with him.

Blasted Runespoor, why can't it just let me in! Why won't he let them? I'll make all see I'm not going away that easily, that I won't throw away my first chance at happiness that easily.

Hermione saves me from completely destroying my potion time and time again, though it is still something orange and sticky looking rather then the pale yellow antidote we were supposed to be making. He looks into my eyes as he vanishes it with a sweep of his wand. I think I'm the only one who saw him pause a bit mid-spell. Maybe he was reading my mind with that legi-something and saw what I was thinking, or maybe he just saw the pain I'm sure my emerald eyes (my mother's, you know) are full of.

I linger. Lunch is next; I can linger without missing another class. He notices, but pretends not to. The classroom is empty of but the two of us for the longest moment, when I think of things to say, of every dream I have had of the next when we would be alone, and he is in that mind-place of his where he is pretending what he feels for me doesn't exist like I know it does, because he wouldn't have ignored me and left me detention-free for as long as he has if he didn't have something that needed hiding. He admitted it to me, for Merlin's sake! He admitted he loved me more then he hated the man who'd branded him like cattle, then was loyal to the man who'd helped him redeem his troubled youth! Why can't it just be so simple that two people who love each other be allowed to love each other without anything getting in the way?

Fate is a vindictive witch and I love her.

Well, screw fate. I'll throw myself into his arms if I have to, fall at his feet, whatever it takes. Even Archimedes admitted that he was happier when were well, if not together, then orbiting fairly close to one another.

But I turn around, and he's gone.

Somehow, skipping out on DADA doesn't seem as fun after a trial of a Divs (Bug Eyes: "Oh, Miss Potter, you're going to die." Me: "What else is new?"). All I can think about, sitting in the library with On the Historie of Magyckal Serpentes in Europe lying uselessly in front of me, is how I've got to get Severus to stop being noble and act more like a Slytherin and take advantage of the situation fate's afforded him. Id est, falling in love with wonderful little me. I may not be Fleur or anything, but I'm not that bad looking. I'm relatively intelligent and good at fighting off evil-doers. He knew that mind-occluding thing and, if worst came to worst, than he could just stop spying altogether. He's had to have redeemed himself by now…

As his last class of the day (Second Year Hufflepuff/Ravenclaw) is slinking dejectedly from the heart of all Hogwarts evil, I slip into the classroom and begin to scrub the cauldrons within. The Runespoor egg is warm and comforting at my side, but his presence even across the room causes me to shiver. He doesn't say anything to me, or I to him, but he knows I'm not going anywhere.

We do the same Tuesday after his Seventh Year NEWT class (whose occupants looking like they'd just come out of a vivisection), me cleaning and him ignoring me but no going anywhere. Wednesday after First Year Gryffindor/Ravenclaw is the same. Thursday after the Hufflepuff/Slytherin First Years pass he says, "Afternoon," to me. I'm breaking him down.

And then comes Friday.

I wake up that morning with a peck of owls at the dorms windows, and it is barely four in the morning by my wand when their noise, at last, gets too loud for me to ignore. I open the window where Hedwig is trying to remain as dignified as possible when surrounded by so many screeching, incessant owls, intending to slam it shut after she's through. That, of course, is not possible, and six or seven barns and scops make it through before I can snap the window closed.

The others dropped their burdens and found perches throughout the room, making enough noise that Hermione, Lavender, and Parvati were starting to stir, as my dear owl gave me the simple note tied to her leg:

– Ari did it. Sirius –

was all it said, and even if I hadn't the slightest clue what he meant by that (and in my drowsy state, it was a near thing), the headlines of the papers the other owls had deposited, like

Black Name Cleared!

from Smoke and Mirror, and, presumably, the various other languages of the papers in question. (Though The Canal Street Journal reported that, with the stocks I apparently have in Dunn, Hastings, and McGully as well as in their Muggle sister-corporation, Clifford Chance, I'd experienced a 0.5% increase in my wealth overnight as a result of this.)

I admit it, I squealed like a little girl at the thought, which made the owls in the room take flight, and jumped on Hermione's bed as she pulled her curtains back. "'Mione," I gushed, suddenly full of energy, "he's free! Sirius is free!" I bounced on her bed, then to mine, where I grabbed a quill, wrote a few, hopefully coherent, congrats on the matter to Sirius on the back of his note, and sent it off with Hedwig (letting in The Beijing Chronicle, The Damascus Sun – "English Ministry admits Miscarriage of Justice," – The Byzantium Philosopher, and the Nous Logos – whose headline, "Battlefield or Courtroom? How Duels are Progressing out of the Field and into the Realm of Law," was printed on three sides of the border while the article spun outward in a circle from the centre; as well as three requests for interviews) before going back to Hermione's bed.

My friend had, by this point, picked up the Smoke and Mirror and was blearily reading the front page, while Lavender and Parvati had cast a silencing charm on their beds and gone back to sleep. "This is g-great," she yawned deeply. "What time is it?"

"Four thirteen in the morning," I extolled gleefully.

"And owls can't arrive at a decent hour of the morning?" Ever since the whole time-turner incident, my dear friend can't function without coffee. Do not try to get anything from her before she's had at least a cup-and-a-half. I know this, but do not care, I'm so excited! No more Azkaban South! No more Dursleys ever again! Merlin, I'm higher then a kite. I want to run screaming through Hogwarts proclaiming the joyous news. "I know they're nocturnal… but really." I wasn't even listening. I was halfway through pulling up a pair of jeans underneath my nightgown while simultaneously trying to put on the first clean shirt I saw.

"H-Harry," she managed around another yawn. "Where you going?"

Realizing my shirt was on backwards, I paused on my way to the door to correct this. "Out," I said, trying to fix the mess of sleeves.

"Oh. Take the owls with you?"

I nodded vigorously – well, shook the hair out of my eyes, but it managed the same thing – but she was already asleep. "All right gang," I called, picking up the closest English-language paper and my egg, "fall out."

It wasn't until I'd left the tower and the owls that had been following me had found other exits, I realized where I was going, and who I was in such a hurry to tell the joyous news.

Severus.

My feet paused halfway to the stair it was searching for, and I, as did my spirits, crumpled to the floor. Severus would certainly not be relieved to hear that Sirius had been cleared of all charges – God, the man had almost got an Order of Merlin for his capture Third Year, until I helped him to escape. And if he ever heard – as he surely would, now that he was known to be an innocent man once again – of Sirius's desire to marry me off to a Weasley or any member of the Magical royal families, be it French, Austro-Hungarian, or Ottoman, mostly because a high profile marriage, he figures, would be bound to keep Snape away… well, let's just say the end result will not be pleasant, whatever it may be. He'll likely go that noble route again and forbid me near him.

Well I for one don't like it. Stupid patriarchal rules that haven't changed since 1283 that allow for girls to marry at fourteen and boys at seventeen. Stupid anachronistic rules that allow for arranged marriages. Stupid backwards rules that have allowed the Muggle world to totally bypass the revolutions of the eighteenth century and everything since, and allow there to be kings over a section of a population that doesn't recognize the title or even the kingdom anymore.

That and, hello, Slytherin. They don't do noble. He wants me and I want him and that should be all that matters.

I pick myself back up but can't bring myself to cry, or go to him. Merlin, who'd ever would have thought there'd be a day that I'd want to go to him? My parents must be rolling in their martyrs' graves. And that's the problem. Maybe it's just so typically teenage rebellion of me, but the last words he said to me – the last words in the last sentence he ever said to me when I could be sure of his affections – keep running wildly through my mind: Don't love me.

I am too weary to make it all the way back up to the tower, so I settle for the kitchens instead. Dobby is, as always, overjoyed to see his, "Mizz Éléonore Potter ma'am," and brings me enough food to feed all the occupants of Azkaban South, let alone little old me. There's a wireless playing the WNN's "Albert and Thoth in the Mornings," in the background, and, of course, they're discussing the trial. Nothing like it has been seen since, well, I don't know when, but Ari would.

"…and the big news today, folks, is out of London."

"Yes, Al. In an ASTOUNDing press release late last night, the British Ministry of Magic admitted to – get this – 'gross negligence an' perversion of law' in the case of Sirius Black v. The Department of Magical Justice. The release admits to the illegal imprisonment of Mr. Black for twelve years in Azkaban Prison as well as the 'miscarriage of justice' that allowed the true perpetrator of the crime to go free to later be involved in, or so the prosecution claims, the return of the most famous Dark Lord in British history."

"Mr. Black, as you may recall, folks, was charged in November of 1981 with the murder of Peter Harvey Pettigrew, aged twenty-one, and twelve Muggles in Newham. Although never formerly charged, he was also accused of breaking a Fidelius Charm placed on Lily and James Potter of Calais and their one-year-old daughter to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."

"According to Mr. Black's testimony, Mr. Pettigrew, who was awarded the Order of Merlin, the Brit's highest honour, after his supposed death, was a rat animagus, which is how he has remained at large all these years. Mr. Black also admits to being an animagus himself, which aided him in his successful breakout from Azkaban Prison some two years ago, which has never been broken into or out of before or since. Higher security regarding this discovery is already being put into place. "

"The Potters' daughter Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore-"

"What a mouthful that name is, Al."

"-Henriette, now fifteen years old, recently spoke out on the believed return of the Dark Lord she defeated fourteen years ago, a story which Persephone and Ralph covered on the WNN's evening news. Her spokesperson says that Miss Potter is 'overjoyed,' by the news that her godfather's name has at last been cleared. Legal actions are being taken to allow Miss Potter to reside with Mr. Black until she comes of age."

"So keep your hands to yourself boys."

"While recently Miss Potter's name has recently been tied with those of Haz-Mat lead singer, Osiris O'Malley; the eldest grandson of Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph II, Count Philipp von Neipperg; as well as the seventeen-year-old son of recently divorced Weird Sisters bandmates Ara Antila and Eugene Delphinis, Simon Antila-Delphinis, according to her spokesperson, Miss Potter is currently not seeing anyone-"

"Meaning, boys, if you catch you without her godfather, you have a chance."

"-choosing instead to focus on her studies at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where she was the champion of last year's Triwizard Tournament."

"What about that Skeeter thing last year, Al? The one that was all over the papers for a month?"

"Oh, yes, that. Well, Thoth, The Daily Prophet had printed that Miss Potter – heiress to over a four hundred million Galleons and considered by French legitimists to be the Baronne de Calais (a title renounced by her great-great-grandfather, Zacharie-Richard, after the Muggle Revolution) – was having an affair with one of her professors, Severus Snape, aged thirty-five, in effort to gain the Prince fortune – which, for those of you out there doing the math, was last valued at a measly hundred mil more then her own, folks."

"Aren't they suing about that?"

"Who isn't suing someone these days?"

"Al, what about that witch up near Kiev – you hear about her? The one suing her neighbour over – get this – 'indecent liberties' with her goat?"

"Wasn't the only thing the poor bastard was doing to it was milking it…?"

The rest of the day went something like this, with owls descending en masse at breakfast. Those of my classmates who got the paper, were informed by their paper-reading peers, overheard the gossip, or else got the gossip from family members in the Ministry were trying to wheedle more information then you thought a girl about half-a-foot shy of six could hold. I felt that I'd be carried off in the gust of whispers directed my way. "How long have you known?" "Do you honestly believe he didn't betray your parents?" or "I can't believe he's saying Peter Pettigrew did all those awful things. Great-Aunt Hilda always said he was…" Class was sufferable, but only because the teachers were forced to keep order, though they found odd ways to congratulate me throughout the day (Spout gave twenty points to Gryffindor for passing her the watering can, while Bug Eyes predicted I'd have six children, become Minister of Magic, and die at a ripe old age in my bed).

It was maddening. Only holding onto that securing presence, the Runespoor egg, did I kept from going into Azkaban myself. That would be headlines, I'll admit: Girl-Who-Lived arrested for murder day godfather found innocent of all charges.

I went to the sanctuary of the potions classroom as soon as the last bell rang. Merlin, the day I'd ever think of this place as a sanctuary. But this place is so full of him now, every inch of it imbued with his dark, protected essence when he is in it, and from across the room a look from his black eyes can make my skin tremble. I have run my hands, undaunted by such things as clothing, along the smoothness of his back and felt the heat there. My hands have tangled in the hair that falls like curtains on either side of his severe face.

I go to the cauldrons and run the water. "Éléonore," I heard like something coming out of a dream, only the pain in his voice was not one I'd have willingly conjured, "I- Congratulations on Black's trial." He spat the words like they'd made him physically ill. They probably did.

"I just bought the law firm. … At least now I don't have to wait another year to be rid of the Dursleys." I'd never have said that to any of my friends, or Remus, or Sirius. Ari knows, because she's my lawyer, and Fleur knows a little, and I think Tonks suspects because she's a lot smarter then she makes out to be. But not anyone like whatever Severus is to me.

I scrub in silence for a while, expecting nothing else to come out of today, when I feel the oddest thing at my side. I look about me, half-expecting a ghost to be floating through me, but nothing's near. I feel the thing again, and I reach a hand – gently – into my pocket.

The egg is stirring.

I give a giddy squeal and rush over to his desk. He looks at me like I've lost my mind, or, perhaps, imbibed a love potion. It is a weary look I've seen before. Then I deposit the wiggling egg atop the paper he's grading. He's a Potions Master, he knows what it is, even if he's probably never seen one before – they're handy in certain memory potions, I've read – they're so rare.

"Where did you get a Runespoor egg?" he asks with a half-awed, half-troubled raise of the professorial eyebrow.

"Archimedes – the statue in front of your rooms," I continue as his eyebrow goes further at the name of the dead mathematician.

"And what were you doing there?"

"Trying to convince the second head to let me in; you know what the middle heads are like, dreamers all. I was trying to appeal to the romantic in it, which is hard when the other two keep interrupting, but you'd, apparently, 'forbidden' it."

"So they gave you a live egg?"

I scooted closer to the desk, "I didn't say it made sense," I offered helplessly, and stared intently at the egg. "It's good it happened here. I wanted to make sure you got the shell – it might have some use – and I bet that gathering up little bits of eggshell and bringing them down a couple flights wouldn't work so well."

"You want me to have the shell?" his voice was a little tight, I thought, like he was shocked. Don't know why.

"Of course. You're a Potions Master and I know they're rare. Besides, in a way it's yours – it was your statue, after all, that gave me the egg." Strange hissing sounds were coming from inside it – snake baby-babble, I gathered – and little windows of shell were popping out from the main body. "It's taken me a while, but I like the name Paracelsus…" It had the right number of syllables, amused me in my own secret way, and I suddenly realized just how close I was next to Severus, who was still in his chair, and how he smelled of mint and potions ingredients today still, and he was so warm even from here… It's had to have been as hard for him as it's been for me – more so, because I've never had to hide even my thoughts – and he can't have gotten over me so quickly…

My eyes caught his, black to emerald, for a moment. He broke first and pulled me the small distance between us until I was sitting on his lap and our tongues were competing for dominance. It had been so long that I could have screamed with joy, but instead I moaned into his mouth as his hands pressed me close. I was intensely aware of everywhere our bodies touched, as if a fire was lit on my skin, already was letting my hands wander as best the chair would allow. The hatching of the egg made a strange background to the noises I was dimly aware we were making, but I was too lost in the sensation to care about anything, even that dear egg. It was just pure joy, to be held close by him again, to touch him as I'd wanted to all those times in class, and know that he'd let me even as I let him touch me…

I don't think we'd ever have broken apart this time if it wasn't for the distinctly Scottish, "By Merlin!" that came from the doorway an infinite amount of time later.

Fate is a vindictive witch and I love her.


	13. In Which I Look Into The Mirror Darkly

I'll admit it was something of a compromising position that my Head of House found me and the school's Potions Master in, what with me on his lap and our hands in distinctly not innocent places, lips locked while a historically considered pet of only Dark Wizards hatched on his desk. If I was her, Merlin knows I'd have started ranting and raving at Severus, asking him what exactly he was doing with one of his Fifth Year students. Granted, though, I was never the calmest of people, and my temper was on a fuse the size of a flobberworm. Still, most people would react to the sight with a general yelling followed by more specific accusations.

We both froze, and I think I turned five shades of Weasley red. I'd have jumped off his lap and run out of the room in abject mortification – highly un-Lion-like, I know. But I mean, Merlin, it's like my mother walked in on me making out with someone, only worse because at least my mother (who, I think I shall say for the first time in my life) is, luckily, dead and would have been legally bound not to fly off the handle too badly. McGonagall is just my professor… like the guy I'm sucking face with… which makes it about ten times worse, and puts my life into significant danger. I'd run right now, but Severus's hands, while they have moved out from under my shirt, are now firmly holding my hips down. I liked the feel of them there, but now wasn't exactly the moment I'd've chosen to discover it.

Then there came the sound of shoes turning around and a door being pulled halfway shut. "I was just coming to see-" she began, and then stopped abruptly, I could see she looked a little confused, not nearly as surprised as I would have thought, and more embarrassed then anything else – as if she'd walked in on her child making-out, - and continued, "I can see you're busy; I'll come back later." The door closed tightly behind her.

I blinked, nay, goggled. Wait, goggled wasn't even the right word. No yelling, no anger, just a simple, "I'll come back later"? Something was seriously wrong with McGonagall and I'd not even the slightest idea what it could be if she wasn't even interested in that one of her fellow professors was, er, taking advantage of one of their students. Unless he could do wandless, wordless magic, Severus hadn't cast a Memory Charm on her. Which meant that we'd need to get the transfiguration professor checked into the infirmary ASAP. We both held ram-rod still before I managed, "Well, that, was odd," and leaned against his shoulder, trying to process the latest oddness in my life.

He remained impossibly still. I looked over at the egg of Paracelsus, who was starting to break open in truth, and stared at it interestedly while nuzzling against the seemingly insensate man.

"Severus," I whispered near his ear, breathing in his minty scent, "I want you to listen to me: I'm not going anywhere. I don't care if Voldemort's out there or not. I don't care if people don't care for the choices we've made. The only thing I know is we can't keep ourselves from each other, and whatever the future may bring, for how the fact that I care so deeply for you and you, despite your willing, care so deeply for me. They can do things to us, things that we may fear, but they can't take that feeling away from us. All we need is a little courage. A little courage and we'll make it through. Just you wait and see."

Paracelsus rocked in his egg, a vibrant orange head shooting out of the mass. I wondered which is was, and how tiny it was now. It probably couldn't wrap around my wrist if it tried at this current size. I felt him begin to relax under me, though his hands held me impossibly closer. No doubt I'd have bruises in the morning. "Éléonore," he said slowly. Have I mentioned how I love the way he makes my name sound? "It's not as simple as that."

"We've been over that. We tried that. It didn't work. What's the worst they can do to you? Sack you? You're a Potions Master and more then a little wealthy; I think you could survive, even if it wouldn't be the perfect outcome. What's the worst they can do to me? Expel me? I'm the bloody Girl-Who-Lived and not a little wealthy myself; I could find another school or private tutors. But I don't think they'll go that far. McGonagall didn't even say anything." Oddly enough.

"I think she's in shock."

"You're in shock. Her, her I don't know what she's in." Maybe she'd been in her cat nip?

Why must every time we take a step forward he jump five back? "I-" the spy began tentatively, in that way of voice that people have when they really don't want to say what they're about to say. His hands were still hard on my waist, and I gently grasped one of his hands and pulled it upward, to grasp other places.

"You are going to do what you were doing. We were both enjoying it, so why not?"

With a much pained air, "Because Black would sooner see you as Gräfin Alessandra-Margaretha von Neipperg then near me."

I made a face at him. "He sent you a Howler, didn't he?"

"At four-fifteen in this morning.

I supposed that if I was woken in the early morning Howler by my archenemy, who I thought was doing dastardly things to his (god)daughter, I suppose I would remember the time oddly specifically as well. I sunk with an unutterable sadness against Severus and recalled that I was supposed to be happy that Sirius was a free man. Even if it did mean he could negotiate marriage contracts between little fifteen-year-old me and the seventeen-year-old grandson of the Emperor of Austria, Count Philipp. Surely there had to be some way around that. I mean, hello Sirius, do I speak Austrian? Or German or Hungarian or whatever it is they speak there? No. Do I even know a word of French beyond "Bonjour" or "Merci" even though, according to the WNN, I'm the Hereditary Baronne de Calais? No. I'm not even sure if Austrians speak German or not, or if they have a separate language. Just think of the fool I'd make of myself trying to figure that out. So will I put up with this? No. "Please tell me excruciating details so I can, I dunno, flee the country before he comes to ship me off."

"Black's serious?" I was too angry at my godfather even to make that pun at his name. "I thought it was merely a threat to keep me away from you." As close as I was to the man, I could feel the anger begin to course in him. It was hot and familiar, and not a little frightening.

Glumly, "No, he's been on this line of things since the summer. At first it was a Weasley or Neville-"

"Longbottom?"

"I know. But then it became a prince or whatever, mostly because he thinks a Weasley wouldn't stop me if I wanted to have an affaire de coeur, while a national border would. Still, I don't think he'd do it unless he felt something drastic needed to be done – and maybe, by then, he'll just be back to the idea of the Himalayan Monastery whachamacallit – St. Bernard's, I think, like the dog – by then."

Snape shook his head, a movement which vibrated throughout his whole body. I think this is a good time to point out exactly how nice his arms were around me, and how I very much liked the feel of him beneath his heavy black robes, and how, when he moved, it jostled me a little closer still. I felt his lips press into my hair and then, "You're right."

"Of course I am – about what in particular though?"

He chuckled. "We tried to keep apart. We failed utterly – on large part because of you, I hope you know-"

"That had been the plan."

"So I realized. But," I knew there had to be a but in there somewhere, "the Dark Lord is still out there and Black is quite mad, so I suggest we… not broadcast our attachments?"

"Well obviously. Love you to bits, Severus, but I'd rather not tempt fate – she and I don't get on well at all," I told him like he was stupid, which he certainly seemed after suggesting that I didn't know such a thing. I was a Gryffindor, not stupid.

That being said, he did look more then a little shocked when I crooned a lullaby in Parceltongue to Paracelsus, now mewling in the remnants of his – its – her – shell. "Come on, darlings; lets go find you something to eat," I told the tiny, Chudly Cannons' orange snake, running a finger over each striped head in turn, the Runespoor so tiny and marvellous in my hand. I held it close and moved to the door, "Gotta feed this thing and run to practice. See you later, Severus!" I called, too honestly happy to care about much else.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

And so I found myself falling into the strangest pattern it must be possible for the daughter of two martyred Gryffindors to have. My classes remained the same, but three nights a week found me out on the Quidditch pitch, preparing for the first big game of the year: Lions versus Snakes. Three other nights offered themselves up to Severus, in his classroom or office – I don't think he dared allow me in his quarters, whatever McGonagall (who, according to him, had actually been pleased by the turn of events, and subtly suggested that we were good for each other so long as we didn't let Umbridge know – I know, right?) feel about the whole thing. Both were workouts in their own ways, Quidditch physically, Snape emotionally, for while we were no longer drawn as… cataclysmically together once we allowed ourselves to regularly… express said feelings, we still found ourselves in other occupations between the scrubbing of cauldrons and marking of papers. Paracelsus, who was slowly growing, despite the fact I'd yet to find what he, it ate, came with me on both these little trips, discovering a love for the sky (as seen from my pocket) that was sure to cause all sorts of neuroses when he got older, as well as for the soapy water I used to clean the cauldrons.

If anyone noticed anything peculiar about my behaviour, they did not say so to me. In the days and weeks that would come, I learned from Ari that the Ministry had tried to force through an educational decree that would have forbidden Hogwarts students from having self-taught courses, as my DADA had become. She had, luckily, stopped it right in its tracks – for had not Dumbledore undergone self-study of Transfiguration his Seventh Year as McGonagall would later? There were other examples, mostly in the more obscure subjects – Ancient Runes and Airthmancy – that I should have taken, but whatever the past, she got it stopped, announcing proudly to me in the same letter that she'd come across her picture taped to a dartboard in the DMJ. Perhaps my classmates thought I was throwing myself into my studies, what with Voldemort and all on the lamb, and in many ways I was, but not the extent the others thought.

Still, I couldn't tell them, could I, that on 43% of my evenings their perfect little Gryffindor (who never ran from anything, who was brave and noble and true, and stood for all things good and Light in the world, freeing prisoners and saving damsels and would – if Sirius, now my legal guardian and father in all but actuality as far as Wizarding England was concerned – had his way, be a princess one day, was having clandestine meetings with the Prince of Slytherin, Severus Snape. It was all so totally Romeo and Juliet that I would have said Shakespeare had taken a trip to the future to stalk me if it wasn't for the fact no old guys in tights had appeared lately. I kept waiting for Paris to leap out of the shadows, but it seemed that Sirius's threat of an arranged marriage was only that, a threat, and nothing ever came of the whole 'von Neipperg affair' except a couple articles in magazines like Smoke and Mirror, which had named me Most Influential Teen Star for the fourth year in a row. My runner up was Simon Antila-Delphinis, who'd started a shelter for abused owls in Glasgow. I tell you.

Despite the fact there was no Paris, which was all well and good because the idea of being a fifteen-year-old wife to anyone, let alone the son of an Archduchess, was a little more then I could handle at the moment. Homicidal maniacs responsible for my parents' deaths and my being branded as a heroine? Those I could handle. There were spells and preparations for those sorts of things. Marriage? I mean, I've thought as much about that as Crookshanks probably thinks of the stock markets, which I guess is normal for a fifteen-year-old witch. I have school to worry about, above stated homicidal maniacs, a quote-unquote boyfriend who may be killed any minute by said homicidal maniac, and a snake with three heads that I'm slowly teaching Parceltongue. Marriage is about nonexistent as a worry, concern, and/or desire. But, just because Paris has yet to show (probably starting a war over golden apples or something, the jerk) doesn't mean I'm not being careful. Map and cloak at all travelling times, and careful loads of books carried too and fro and the like. Severus has even taught me a few more spells and wants to teach me the occul-mind-thingy, but I think it is a needless worry. If I ever get close enough to Voldemort where he can figure out who I've been snogging, I'm going to have bigger problems then that. After all, his "People I'm Going to Kill" list is pretty much one through five, me; seven, nine, twelve, and fifteen, me; and Dumbledore everything else. I don't think having a good rouler une pelle with one of his 'evil' minions is going to change that very much. But whatever. It gives me an excuse to be around him if anyone really needs a good explanation of why I've been spending so much time with the Potions Master.

If I didn't think it'd cause him to react badly, I'd send a Howler to Sirius that played Wagner's wedding march for an hour straight. I mean… well, I don't know what I mean, only that the whole things ridiculous and I will explode if anyone ever mentions it, Austro-whatever Grafs, or things that I should not be doing ever again.

So, with six of my seven nights covered by utterly exhausting and diametrical exercises, you've got to wonder, do I rest on the seventh day? Do I use it to do homework (well, yes, but that happens most days early in the morning before breakfast)? Do I pause to consider that, hey, perhaps its not a good idea to become romantically involved with a former Death Eater who went to school with my deceased parents, even though we both like each other and we seem to have the (bizarre) approval of my Head of House, and that, perhaps, I'm getting into something over my head, that I am indeed fifteen years old, not a warrior or a lover or anything but a girl who never got a chance to be a girl, thrown into a war that I can't help but think revolves around me more then as simply the one who got away? No, my seventh night I spend in a room revealed to me by Dobby that morning I spent in the kitchens, The Come-and-Go Room, The Room of Requirement, and therein teach those who want to learn from someone who isn't an overgrown frog who hates all human-kind.

We call the group the DA, The Defence Association. Cedric's girlfriend, if you can still call her that, wanted to call it Dumbledore's Army but I've learned not to tempt fate by now and quickly explained that, if that name ever got out, we'd be looking at big Umbridge trouble, so The Defence Association it is. The first few meetings were rough – Zacharias Smith almost got himself blasted through the wall a couple of times, first from a Disarming Spell when he didn't believe me when I said it's a powerful weapon I've used against Voldemort, and after that I wanted to give him a good iaceo everytime he annoyed me after – but they got better. My students, if I dare use the word, wanted to learn, and there is a great joy that I have found in teaching those who want to learn what you have to teach. Severus was right when he was helping me prepare for the third task: the more spells you know, the more options you have. The more options you have in a crisis, the more likely you'll come out of it in one piece.

And this is a crisis. My dreams are almost every night of a long hallway with a single door, of an impossibly large room that could have passed for the Library of Alexandria if books and not tiny glass balls line the shelves glowing with an ethereal light that I was not entirely comfortable with. It was as if my mind, surrounded by so many improbable things during the day, had escape into some surrealist vision with my dreams – for alongside the long hallway and the room of lustrous orbs, there was a room filled with clocks of all shapes and sizes, another where the planets coalesced into milky fog that shone in the light of the stars; and a third filled with whispers and whispers alone. I don't know what they mean, my dreams. I'd scour Divs textbooks if I thought they held the answer. But they don't. I know they don't. Voldemort is out there, and no matter how happy I can be one moment here, and the next I'm reminded that there's this terrible storm overhead that I can't outrun. Merlin above, I know I'm not the shiniest Knut in the bag, but I'm smart enough to know that just because the MoM doesn't believe it's true doesn't stop me from having seen a madman step away from death's razor edge and know that madman is going to stop at nothing to continue the reign of terror he'd unleashed in my parents' childhoods. I know this is the start of something terrible, though just what I don't know.

So I prepare. I spend my evenings teaching a renegade defence organization, in the company of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry's most reviled professor (voluntarily), and, occasionally, playing Quidditch. It passes, oddly enough, very quickly. One moment it was just a few hours after dinner in his classroom, teaching Paracelsus how to talk; the next it was Halloween, and for once I wasn't in the doldrums about it – sad, yes, but it wasn't the centre of my universe, not now, fourteen years later, when I was just starting to live; – and then, in such an amazing fashion that I don't know if it wasn't a dream how it came like clockwork, it was the last week before Christmas, and I actually had a home to go home to.

I was looking forward to seeing Sirius, who'd not threatened me with monastery or arranged marriage in months. Tonks and I were still exchanging regular pranks, but that had dissolved into me subscribing her to every British bridal magazine in existence, and her sending me every French lingerie catalogue that could be found in Paris, teaming up with Fleur of all things to see it done. I swear I never should have introduced the two of them. I miss them both, though. They at least are understanding to some degree. Ron and Hermione, as well as all of Gryffindor and at least half each of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff will skin me alive when they find out what I've been doing.

Oh well. I can live with that.

I'd just finished the last DA of the term, and was in kind of a pissy mood between Smith's, "Oh, we're not learning anything new, boo hoo, boo hoo," jerk mode and an awful case of PMS, and so I lingered around the Room of Requirement as everyone left in twos and threes apparently very interested in the shelf on various duelling styles near the back corner. When I thought everyone had left, I straightened up and stretched languorously. It was my plan to head up to the infirmary and get the beautiful – amazing, miraculous – potion Madam Pomprey had to deal with such things before heading back up to the tower.

I was not counting on Michael Corner being there still. "Hey Michael," I said wearily, "What's up?" Chocolate would be wonderful right now. I wonder who discovered chocolate. They should be given an Order of Merlin or Noble Peace Prize or something.

"Nothing much," he said, hands in his pockets as he leaned back on his heals in the oddest fashion.

Confusion stained my brow, "If you're here to ask me what to get Ginny for Christmas, I honestly don't know. I'm not exactly the all-knowing best friend; you should ask Hermione – she picks up on those sorts of things." I wondered where Paracelsus had gotten off to. He was still a small Runespoor after all, maybe three-quarters a food long, and anything he was likely to encounter in Hogwarts could easily crush him. I'd seen dust bunnies in the castle larger then he was. Maybe he was off getting me chocolate. A smart Runespoor would be doing that if it knew just how awful this whole female mammal thing is.

"It's not about Ginny," he said, turning a shade brighter.

Rather hoping he'd get to the point soon, because if he did I might be able to con some medicinal chocolate out of the nurse before she went to bed. Is it sad I know the usual time the school nurse goes to bed? I think so. It's a sign I've been injured entirely too many times, I think. "Oh?" I started checking under the nearby tables and bookshelves. Paracelsus was an orange-and-black three-headed snake. He wasn't exactly hard to miss. Though, now that I thought of it, I don't think anyone besides Hermione and Severus have seen him all these months. I just feel like there's a mariachi band pounding you-know-where, and really am not in the mood for anything besides that wonderful, fire engine red potion and a hot bath. And, of course, chocolate.

"I… we actually broke up last week." I frowned. I hadn't noticed, actually. Some friend I am. But, then again, Ginny and I had never been particularly close. "I… I was wondering if, maybe, you'd, er, like to go out with me sometime?"

I banged my head on the table I was searching under when I realized what he was asking and how it had nothing to do with a certain coca candy. I didn't know whether to be delighted that someone was interested in me other then Severus, which is sort of flattering; angry that he was planning to use me on the rebound after Ginny, which is far from it; or insulted that he thought he was grand enough to expect me to say yes, I would go out with him even when I hardly knew him, which is just insulting to the whole female species. I mean, his Water-Hose Charm was pretty impressive, but that's about all. "Er," I said slowly, "Michael, I'm really flattered and all…"

It was his turn to flush. It pleased me he was at least not stuck-up enough to not be embarrassed. "Oh, right, I understand." He mumbled.

"It's not you Michael, it's just… I'm already sort of seeing someone," which isn't a lie, and a very vague not-lie at that. "If I wasn't though…" I trailed off, leaving the, "I'd still not want to date you," out for his dignity.

"No, I get it. See ya, Harry." And he stormed out of The Room of Requirement, making me wonder, oddly enough, what he had to be angry about. I mean, I supposedly dated rock stars and rock stars' sons. I'd kind of been hoping that sort of thing would keep my mediocre Hogwarts classmates from this sort of painful situation. In a mean, I'm sure hormonally driven, way, I wished I had finished my sentence.

"Stupid Ravenclaws," I muttered myself. Well, not that he was gone, "Paracelsusss, where are you?" Stupid snakes, running off on their own when they were still babies. Stupid boys, asking stupid questions and making me have to keep Madam Pomprey up later then she liked.

Par answered first, sliding down from a fake windowsill overlooking mountains that wouldn't have been there even if the window had been real, "We are here, Mère." They always called me that, mère, rather then 'Speaker' like Archimedes did. Don't ask me how parceltongue can sound like French on occasion, but I suppose it's just some weird magical quirk that I'll never understand. It'd be nice if I'd some other parcelmouth besides Voldemort to talk to about it, but I guess I can't have everything.

"Wasss that one trying to pair-bond with you?" asked Acel.

"Don't be stupid, Acel," Sus chided his brother (well, I assume brother). "That one isss too young to pair-bond."

"And what would you know about pair-bonding?" I ask the head, crossing over to it quickly and allowing it to wrap around my left hand. For a months-old snake, it sure had an unhealthy preoccupation with human 'pair-bonding,' as they called it. I can only blame it on myself really – what was I doing besides just that when it hatched?

"Plenty," Sus insisted, put out that I didn't believe him.

"We watch the nestlingsss you care-give. The youngest male of the red-scaled clan trysss to pair-bond with your nest-mate, but isss very poor at it."

"We think it odd that so many nestlingsss attempt to pair-bond before they have reached the final moulting. Isss there a scale-lessss one disease that meansss your kind must bear eggsss early?"

"I think it'sss romantic."

"I think Par and Acel are both stupid. It'sss ephebophilia and I think it'sss disgusting."

"Sussss thinksss everything'sss disgusting."

"He doessss have a point, Acel."

"Mère isss the same age as the young of the red-scaled clan and her nest-matesss, but the cat-woman findsss no ill with Mère and the dungeon-man pair-bonding."

"Mère isss older."

"The scale-lessss onesss do not know that."

"The cat-woman and the dungeon-man know."

Like The Twins with a hang-over, even as infants who I don't know what they eat, even though they manage to grow – rather like Skrewts that way. At least Runespoors have a purpose, even if it's only to annoy me. "I'm fifteen," I pointed out, not adding that 'cat-woman' was probably on the nip, getting a headache in addition to every other annoying thing hormones had done to me already, "and I'm not pair-bonded to anyone."

"What."

"Ever."

"Mère."

Stupid snakes. I didn't even bother heading up to the infirmary – waking up the woman who'd brought me from death's welcome mat more then a few times for cramp potions was not something I looked forward too – and, instead, took the stairs downward to Severus's office. Someone had to make the potion for the school, I figured, and I knew enough about potions to find the right one and enough about the tripwire-wards on the door to not disturb him from whatever he did on the days I didn't darken his doorstep.

My Runespoor continued to debate amongst itself on human sexuality as I bypassed the wards around the office and went into his storeroom. Bright, fire engine red. Smells disturbingly of lilac and prunes. How hard could it be to find?

I was searching through the storeroom, all but ignoring the chattering Runespoor, when Par said in total non sequitur to just about anything that could have gone before, "We found a bug a lunar rotation ago."

"Oh? Really?" I said, not really interested.

"Yesss. A strange she-beetle."

"Tasted like sour honey and dried ink."

"Very glittery."

"We thought you might like to give it to the ewe-woman you speak of, the one who livesss in the stone-nest far away, for the long night celebration the nestlingsss speak of."

I paused in my search. Snakes could be downright odd sometimes. "If you ate the beetle a month ago, how can I give it to Ari for Christmasss?" I shouldn't have asked, though, as I discovered a moment later, for Par soon spit up a very glittery and very dead but otherwise mint condition beetle. Carefully, I scooped it into a free jar from Severus's cabinet and tried not to gag. "Thanksss, I guesss," I told my bizarre snake-child.

"You're"

"Welcome."

"Mère."

One day I was going to have to sit down and look up the meaning of sarcasm with my Runespoor. However doing so might be wasted on the poor creature unless I teach at least one of them how to read – Par or Sus would be the best choice; Acel, like (his father?) Him, reminds me more then a little of Luna on one of her bad days, - so I probably shouldn't bother. But, first, I wanted that bloody potion and a huge chunk of Honeydukes' finest.

So wrapped up was I in the mechanics of teaching a snake to read, let alone turn pages, and my search for the relief-giving potion, I missed the murmur of fabric and the waft of mint that was, as the snakes would call it, my bonded-mate. "You know, Éléonore," he said, startling me into nearly dropping the jar with the dead bug in it, which probably would have broken Paracelsus's hearts, "I really don't think it's necessary for you to have to sneak into my supply cabinets to steal potions ingredients anymore."

"I'm not here to steal potions ingredients," I told him with a tight smile, slipping the bug jar into the pocket of my robes, "I'm here to steal potions, actually. A muscle relaxant and a headache potion, if you have it. Stupid Michael Corner made me miss Pomprey's bedtime, and I wasn't planning on waking her up for something short of life-or-death, though I might kill someone if I don't get one or the other soon."

"You could have come to me, of course." He closed the supply cabinet, re-applied the wards, and led me to the third level of the dungeon where his own rooms were located. I think he sounded a little put-out, and for some reason that amused me like nothing else had tonight.

"I didn't want to bother you during your man-time."

"'Man-time?'" he queried with that professorial eyebrow as he gave the password ("Xanadu") to Archimedes. I thought I saw Him wink at me as the statue spun aside to reveal the opening.

"I don't want to be clingy or anything. But, hey, if you want me to come here next time, I'll cling away. Whatever. I'm not picky."

Paracelsus slipped from my wrist then, slithering down my leg to the floor, to crawl out the opening shortly before it closed, ("Silly Mère," I heard one of the heads tell the statue, "and she saysss she'sss not peer-bonded) leaving me, I suddenly realized with a shiver, all alone with my beau in his quarters. Of course at a chance like this I'd feel like a pair of beaters was tearing up my insides. Stupid hormones.

That's when I realized he'd taken me to his bedroom. "Lay down if you're not feeling well. The potion you need is so simple a Squib could make it," and, with that, he disappeared, presumably to make it. Merlin, the wonders of frenching a Potions Master on a regular basis! Carefully, I considered my options: a) lay down on the soft, comfortable bed and try to fight off the bludger-like pain or, b) make my way into the main room and keep it clear that, on no uncertain terms, I wasn't even up to being cheery.

What can I say, I was in pain. I kicked off my shoes and curled into a pained ball amidst the minty smell impregnated in his sheets. Happily, he came back fairly quickly with the blessed potion, and I downed it like a man who spent the last week in the Sahara. I felt the soreness slowly begin to recede.

And, with that, I fell asleep.

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I was having the best dream ever, involving several details only careful study of Severus's living quarters could provide, when I felt the dream shift from beneath me. I felt strong, smooth and supple as I slipped between the bars that shone like silver, along the chilly stone. I had a dust-mote's-eye-view of the world, distorting normal images into foreign nightmares of impossible height and distance. It was utterly dark, but I could see in a way that I could never describe with words, with colours that do not exist in any human tongue.

There was a scent without clear source in the room, but I identified its origin quickly and bemoaned that my work was too important to dare pause and feast. My tongue, strangely thinner and forked, flicked a cheerless flicker in the direction of the dozing man, and I proceeded onward…

But the man was not dozing, he was pulling his wand – no choice – and I attacked, sinking sharp fangs into the thin flesh, feeling the pulse of hot blood… Must hurry, man was screaming, others will come soon… Blood from the burst veins splattered all over the floor – what a waste…

My scar felt like it would burst. I didn't realize I was screaming until that instant, when I felt a pair of hands try to extricate me from the tangle of blankets I'd made. "Éléonore! Éléonore!" he cried out in concern, repeating my name as he tried to fix whatever it was that was wrong. Dimly, in a part of my mind somehow less affected by the pain, I noticed he was shirtless.

At last, pulled out of the blankets enough to be brought into a sitting position, "I… dream… Mr. Weasley… attacked…"

He tried to hold me, which did, admittedly, help me forget some of the pain and the rising bile in my throat. "Hush now; it's only a dream…"

"No!" I told him. "Not a dream… I've got to see Dumbledore…."

Paracelsus came running into the room then from wherever he'd been, hissing, "Bad, bad, bad," with all of his heads.

For some reason, the state of my Runespoor seemed to convince him it wasn't just a normal nightmare, and he, sadly enough, put on a shirt and flooed us to the Headmaster's office.

The Headmaster was already there, apparently in deep discussion with himself by the looks of it. "Severus, Harry, what a strange surprise," he said amusedly. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

Next thing I knew, Ron and Ginny had been gathered, and we were taking a portkey to HQ.


	14. In Which I Have a Good, Old-Fashioned Family Christmas

Christmas

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I hate my life.

Let me rephrase: I don't hate my life. In fact, I rather enjoy my life most the time. I just hate it when all the parts tangle together into tight, annoying knots of confusion and anger. Mr. Weasley was going to be alright, they told us. But that didn't stop Nagnini from having bit him, or myself from having dreamed I was Voldemort's snake. And I'd had a quite pleasant evening, apart from the whole Michael Corner incident and the cramps and the vision. Well, the part where, however unknowingly, I slept in the same bed as Severus was nice. That's the sort of thing in life I do enjoy, as is spending the holidays with my godfather for the first time in fourteen years, with my friends all around me. It's the part where I arrive at my godfather's house shortly after sleeping in said bed under curious circumstances with my friends that I really hate.

I was sort of planning on explaining everything after seeing Sirius had gotten quite a lot to drink and was sitting in a dazed stupor in front of the fire, the lights on the tree twinkling in a merry way that would make no one think of disembowelment or convents. I was also planning on having Remus, Tonks, Fleur, and possibly a cat in the house to help calm my godfather down, restrain him, or distract him if worst came to worst. I would sit him down and tell him, "Sirius, you're my favourite godfather in the world," and then pause while he made a joke that he was my only godfather. Then, after he done that, I would tell him I loved him very much and that I'd… found something very interesting, that it wasn't evil, in fact, it was just a baby and couldn't have been evil if it tried, well, unless you counted what it did to Ms. Norris, and I think that is only a professional rivalry, school pet to school pet. Probably at this point he'd ask me what I was talking about, because Hedwig was a she and got along well with cats besides. So then I'd show him Paracelsus, explain the whole three heads with three different personalities, overly interested in human sexuality (so don't mind if you can't him if you find him sneaking in on you if you're doing anything I don't want to know about), and its not important where I got it from.

My plan for telling him that I've been sort of, er, seeing Severus is the same. It involves a lot firewhiskey in particular, and a shield or three between us.

It's more of the fact that I shouldn't even bother to plan anything and just let the chips hit me wherever they want, because it seems like a waste of time and energy to bother getting up when I'm knocked down anymore. Yes, I know it's melodramatic, but I frankly don't care anymore. I just want the thing that everyone wants, I guess: a loving family and a happy home, no more Dark Lords or tournaments or mutant frog-women. That doesn't mean I'm not going to stop teaching the DA, or learning spells as fast as I can, but that's not my primary reason for existence anymore, and I don't think it's been for a long time.

When the tea kettle Ginny, Ron, and myself had been latched onto landed in my godfather's front room, I released it immediately and, seeing a hideous urn to one side of the room, ran towards it, upchucking into it. I hate them, and not just because of the third task. Now, in addition to having a quickly returning headache and cramps, I have nausea. Its things like this that cause me to say things like, "I hate my life," because, right now, I kind of do.

"Mère," said Par as the Runespoor glided out of my pocket and into my hair, extending his tail as if to check my temperature. "Are you sick?"

"You can't be sick," Acel insisted, raising his head up to examine those who were surely concerned about why I was violently ill into a Sino-Japanese urn and why there might be a vibrantly orange snake with three heads tangled in my sleep-tousled hair.

Sus quickly agreed, though his tone distasteful as he too surveyed Ron, Ginny, Sirius and The Twins, who'd now arrived with our luggage. "You need to get not-sick very fast, Mère. The scale-less onesss are looking at usss strangely, and we might have."

"Bitten the broom- and-"

"-mop-manssss'ssss Cat.

"She wasss sniffing usss."

"Like we were food."

"And wasss very ugly."

I projectile vomited again into the urn. It looked old. I hope it was a favourite of Walburga Black, er, née Black. Actually, I hope it was a wedding present from her parents.

"Mère?"

"Is this dog-man?"

"Grand-père?"

I banged my head against the wall as I slid down it to the floor. Luckily, Sirius was too concerned to notice either the dent in the wall I surely left or that there was a snake on my head, and reminded us all why we were at HQ in the first place, "What's going on? Phineas Nigellus said Arthur's been badly injured-"

"Ask Harry," Fred told him, eyes pinned to the orange head that was surveying the world around my head.

"Yeah, I want to hear this for myself," George said in turn, sitting down on one of the trunks and staring even more intently at me. All of them – the 'red-scaled clan,' as Paracelsus would call them – were looking at me expectantly. Why, oh why, do people look at me like that, like I'm a Prophet of the Light or Mammon's Priestess or something? It's so annoying. And these are my friends, I tell you. I don't really care. It's just a trivial concern. Like the fact that all Fleur's friends have S-names and that even Mrs. Weasley's hair is Weasley red though she's a Prewitt by birth.

"It was-" I began slowly, pulling Paracelsus out of my hair and deciding on the fly just how much I could tell them, "I had a – a kind of – vision…" I tried to explain.

"Never mind that, Mère. We've got bigger problemsss."

"I told you to leave Mssss. Norrisss alone after last time." I scolded it, "I – er – sort of – er – saw the whole thing," I tried again, detailing them – minus the snake's-eye-view part of it all – what I'd seen in my dream.

They continued arguing amongst themselves not seeing that they couldn't just storm St. Mungo's before they'd any logical reason to go there. And I mean the night could have gotten so much better too, I mean, I'd got my beautiful potion, and fallen asleep in Severus's bed and seen him shirtless, apparently having fallen asleep next to me, and there was just the whole open ended wonder of what might have happened that Voldemort and his stupid dreams had destroyed. I felt like an intruder on someone else's grief, the way I felt at holidays only reversed. I'd no reason to be pleased that I managed to save Mr. Weasley when he still might die, or that I managed to see Severus shirtless even briefly when everything could come crashing down upon us yet.

"I know it's hard, but we've all got to act as though we don't know anything yet. We've got to stay put, at least until we hear from your mother, all right?" Sirius was telling them. At least someone had a clear thought…But I just wanted my chocolate and a nice, warm bed.

He got the others butterbeer. Me, me he helped up, vanished the entire urn saying it had indeed been a favourite of his mother's, given to her by her brother Cygnus and his wife, Druella – Tonks's grandparents, – and pushed me into a chair. I wished there was another vase for him to disappear as well, it made him look so happy to do so. "You look exhausted, Éléonore."

"Mère'sssss not been sleeping, Grand-père."

"Shut up, Par," I hissed, and translated for curious, if slightly wary, Sirius, "He's trying to tell me about something naughty he did before we left the castle."

Acel looked at her curiously, "No we're not, Mère; why are you telling Grand-père otherwise?"

"Shut up, Acel," I hissed more angrily, "I think he bit her for saying he was ugly. Or maybe he bit her because she's an ugly cat. I'm not entirely sure – they've not been overly clear about it themselves."

"You're being weird, Mère. Even more so then usual. Is there a reason why you're lying to Grand-père?"

"Susss, shut up!" I turned to Sirius, who I think now knew I'd gone around the deep end. "Sirius, this is Paracelsus, my Runespoor. He wants to know if you have any chocolate." The heads looked at me in disgust (well, Par and Sus looked at me in disgust. Acel was still staring at Sirius curiously) and then slithered off to explore. Hopefully he'll get into less trouble here. I doubt it. Oh well, at least Krecher is the only small animal around here he can harm.

"Éléonore… why do you have a Runespoor?" It was a very, very careful voice.

"The question's more of why a Runespoor think I'm its mother," I said just as carefully.

Then, after a moment, during which I'd not tried to explain Paracelsus's existence to him. "Why does a Runespoor think you're its mother?"

"Probably because I, er, well, try to feed it – I've never exactly figured out what it is that they eat, besides the occasional beetle, but I'm not sure if that's exactly what they, er, eat – and I, er, sing it lullabies."

"You sing it lullabies?"

"In parceltongue," I clarified. I don't think he remembered that I could talk to snakes. He'd been in jail that year I'd discovered that talent and I haven't exactly had much use for it until now. I mean, hello, only other speaker homicidal maniac. He was blinking an awful lot. "Anyway, yea, that's probably why."

After a moment, "Éléonore, are you going to tell me how you got it or not?"

"You've got to promise not to get angry." He promised, though in a tone that didn't guarantee anything. "Well, you see, Archimedes gave it to me."

"And who is Archimedes?"

The Twins didn't even say any jokes about dead mathematicians. I shouldn't even be telling him without them not-worried-for-their-dying-father's-state-of-health to joke about that. "A statue…" I took a deep breath and just let it out, "ofaRunespoorinfrontofSeverus'srooms."

There was a very long, very cold pause. And then he exploded.

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I was shouting at him through my – locked – bedroom door. "I'm not going into a convent, Sirius!" As it was the holidays, I couldn't use magic – blasted RRUW stupidity, - and so instead I was busily moving furniture in front of the door to the hall. I knew it wouldn't stop him if he decided to use magic, but, as angry as he was and having been deprived a wand for so long in Azkaban, I doubt that would come to mind for a while.

"I'm not going to send you to St. Bernard's, Éléonore!"

"Oh? Really?" my voice got that squeaky hint it gets when I'm really mad. I shoved the dresser against the door already, as well as the desk, clothes press, three chairs, and the bedside table. I was rapidly running out of things that I could move. "Found a place even more isolated?"

"I actually was thinking the secure ward of St. Mungo's. What were you thinking, snogging that greasy-haired monster?"

"That I enjoyed it!" I shouted back, entering the attached bathroom (glad that Mrs. Weasley, in her infinite wisdom, had set aside one of the old suites for my sole use, probably figuring even then that this would become my home, however angry I was at my godfather at the moment; the room had been Sirius's younger brother's once, and during my summer stay the room had been decidedly masculine, dark-wooded and dreary-looking. Now I couldn't help but notice that the furniture I'm moving around is new and painted white, with a fresh coat of pale yellow paint above the wainscoting, with new red-and-gold curtains and bedspread… very nice… very much a room that was meant for me to enjoy. I would have been overcome with emption if I wasn't already) and searching for something in there to move. It was all screwed down, of course (though it was now a cheery sky blue and by far more modern then it'd been before), and went to find anything else.

There was an angry growl that taught me, yes, humans could make such noises, "He's old enough to be your father!"

"So are you!"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm not my mum or dad, Sirius. You may have hated him, but I don't. He's actually quite… pleasant."

"Pleasant!" he raged again, and I heard the angle of his voice change next, as if he was shouting down the staircase rather then at my door, "Fred! George!"

I did the math in my head, threw it out, and went on instinct. "Don't you dare!"

The Twins, who'd been worriedly waiting downstairs and probably tuning out all of what had been going on upstairs, trotted obediently upstairs. Or, at least, I thought it was them. There was none of the spring in their step that I was accustomed to; at least that I could hear.

"You're seventeen, right?"

Pounding on the wall by the covered door, I bellowed loudly, "Sirius Orion Black, you stop that this instant!"

"Yeah," said one sadly.

"Way to go us," said the other.

"I will have Padfoot neutered, so help you Merlin, if you so much as even think about it."

Sirius, of course, ignored me. "I was going to save this for Christmas," he said, unfolding something, "but I got Ari to push through the paperwork. Congratulations, Éléonore, I've adopted you, and, as your adoptive father, it is my right – nay duty – to keep you away from that no-good, good-for-nothing, cradle-robbing, lying, scum-of-the-earth bastard away from you!"

I honestly don't know what I was thinking, "Severus isn't like that! When I had that dream he took me straight to Dumbledore like… I… asked…" I trailed off. Yeah, I know. I out to be shot and hung sometime for the words that come out of my mouth.

Even though there were miles of furniture between us, I could easily imagine the colour he was turning. "So, which one of you will it be?" he asked the twins, "You, Fred? Or you, George?"

"Which one of us what?" an unlucky twin asked.

As if it was the most obvious thing in the world, "To marry Éléonore of course!"

"Er-"

"Fred it is, then."

"Wait!" I shouted at him, hastily moving aside the furniture in attempts to stop him.

"It's for your own good, Éléonore! I'll have Ari draw up the paperwork-"

"Er-" went a twin again as feet scampered downstairs

Then comes a heavenly voice ascending the stairs: "Sirius Orion Black, step away from those children and nobody will get hexed."

"I'm not promising anything, Ari!" I shouted to the woman, struggling to move the dresser aside now that it seemed someone who was still sane had arrived.

"As your lawyer, I must insist that you do. Come out of there this instant. Boys, you should be downstairs with your family. Ephraim is there too; he'll keep an eye on the lot of you until Molly arrives," I finally managed to pry the door open and was treated to the sight of Ari, who was no taller then me, her blonde head barely reaching Sirius's nose, staring my, er, adoptive father down, wand in hand. She turned to me, grabbed me by the hand, and pulled both of us into the kitchen, where we were ordered to sit across from each other. "What seems to be the problem here?" she asked as professionally as possible for a woman with a canary yellow robe thrown over her Muggle-style pyjamas was able to look. It was quite impressive, I noticed dimly while glaring at Sirius, who was leaning back in his chair, arms crossed, like he was the teenager.

"She's dallying with Snivilius!" he told her, as if it were obvious.

I, the adult here if it wasn't him, tried to be more reasonable. "He's trying to marry me off again."

She pinched the bridge of her nose and sat down. "You do know that most father-daughter arguments aren't resolved by law firms, right?"

"I was handling this perfectly well, thank you very much."

Shocked, "You were trying to get Fred to marry me while his father is, quite possibly, dying!"

"Like I said, I was handling it."

"Okay then: Éléonore, details."

"Wait-" my mother's friend held up a hand and silenced Sirius without even a glance. Yes, she obviously dated him in her time. That must have been an amusing couple. Pity she'd moved on an

"You'll get your chance after, Sirius. Go ahead, Éléonore."

"He's not happy that I'm surrogate mother to the Runespoor the statue that guards Severus's rooms gave me. Well, that and I, er, am, er, sort of involved with his 'archenemy.' To save my 'virtue,' he was trying to marry me off to the first person handy, which is the real problem."

"Sirius?"

"Snape has seduced her! Can't you see it? It may already be too late-"

"I see," Ari accio-ed a bottle of firewhiskey and poured herself and Sirius a shot that probably should have been called a glass-full, and a much smaller, shot-like shot for me. I ignored the beverage, but Ari downed hers and poured herself another, "Éléonore, how long have you been 'involved' with Severus?"

"Six months," I mumbled. Though Sirius had only just raised his glass, I could see the steam already pouring from his ears.

"And has he ever done anything untoward to you?"

Even more quietly, "I wish." And boy did I. Just not right now. Now I wished for chocolate and more of that beautiful muscle relaxant. And to generally forget this whole evening had ever happened, with the notable exception of the shirtless Severus.

"Well, there's no law against it: in 1381 Aldyth Merle, a Seventh Year Ravenclaw, married the fifty-three-year-old Hogwarts Arithmancy teacher, Galliard Dolton; and in 1526 Tristan Golden, a Seventh Year Slytherin, wed his cousin, the Charms Professor's nineteen-year-old apprentice, Faith Boyd."

My adoptive father balked, "Who's talking about marriage?"

"I believe you were. But, in short, no law against sexual relationships-"

"Sexual!"

"-between students and teachers, no law against romantic relationships-"

"Romantic!" He looked apoplectic.

"-so there's no problem-"

"No problem!" I smirked at Sirius. "The man is twenty years older then her!"

"-so long as the relationship is consensual, which it quite obviously is. Now really, Sirius, Ephraim is five years older then me, and I do believe McGonagall's husband was ten years her senior when he passed." Well, that surprised me. I didn't know McGonagall'd been married.

"That's not the point-"

"Isn't it?"

I interrupted before I needed to call a lawyer for the two of them, "How'd you know to come anyway?"

"Ginny flooed me. Said she thought you were murdering each other upstairs. So, you and Severus, huh?"

I shrugged. I so didn't want to have this conversation it wasn't even funny. "Well," I said as brightly as someone whose gotten hardly any sleep at all, been verbally attacked by the godfather-that-adopted-me-without-even-asking (not that I really mind, not really, just it would have been nice to have been asked about something to do with my life for once), and was possibly possessed by Voldemort's snake in my dreams can be, "I'm thinking breakfast. You better have chocolate in this house somewhere, because I'm thinking chocolate chip pancakes… bacon, eggs… tea, of course…" And, with that, I got to work. Ari jumped up to help me, though I quickly discovered the extent of her cooking abilities was the boiling of water for tea, as did Sirius after a moment.

I was just bringing a stack of pancakes to the table when Mrs. Weasley arrived and, taking the plate out of my hands, wrapped me in a hug. "Oh, Harry… The might not have found Arthur for hours, and ten it would have been too late, but thanks to you he's alive and Dumbledore's been able to think up a good cover story for Arthur being where he was, you've no idea what trouble he would have been in otherwise, look at poor Sturgis…" Personally I found her gratitude, like her hug, rather constricting. They had no right to thank me, I'd just told the right people, who did the real work. Still, it was a nice change from being yelled at, so I was quite pleased nonetheless.

"And Sirius, I'm so grateful, watching the kids for me… The think he'll be there a little while and it would be wonderful to be nearer… Of course, that might mean we're here for Christmas…"

With a happiness I'd not seen on his face since the summer, my, er, adoptive father beamed at Mrs. Weasley, "The more the merrier! We'll just have Christmas dinner at The Burrow next year," which caused her to take the spatula from Ari, save the burning eggs, and smile the whole time with the sort of painfully happy smiles I see on people who come to visit me in the hospital wing after I've not-died again. Which is to say that she was so happy there were tears glittering in her eyes and she didn't even try to offer cooking lessons to Ari, who was, shortly thereafter, to be found dozing in a chair, robe half-open, and muttering in her sleep about flea-ridden dogs.

Then came slithering into the room from under the oven (how he got there I don't even want to know) Paracelsus, who was hissing proudly, "Mère, look!"

"We found."

"A grasshopper!" and spit it up proudly onto my shoes.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

"God rest you merry, Hippogriffssss, let nothing you dismay," Acel sang along with Sirius as he and myself worked tirelessly (and, I think, just to have something to do, as neither of us felt comfortable intruding on the Weasley family, be it in their shared sorrow over their hospitalized patriarch or their shared joy he'd soon be joining them) to make HQ more festive and enjoyable then anything the house elves might have at Hogwarts. Sirius, of course, couldn't understand what the Runespoor was saying, but I could and it was beginning to annoy me.

"For Mer-er-lin the Sorcerer was born upon thisss day," Par joined in, "To save usss all from the Dark power when we were gone astray."

Sirius looked at me. He'd been trying very, very hard not to say anything to me about Snape, Paracelsus, or St. Bernard's. I respected him for it. That didn't mean it was easy for either of us. I also thought he'd sent a few Howlers to Severus, but that was Severus's issue to deal with.

I shook my head at him, looked at Paracelsus, and then continued to string the tinsel on the tree. The Runespoor, which had stolen a piece of tinsel, wrapped its tail around one end and had Sus biting the other to make a necklace of sorts around, er, my neck, continued on to the stunning conclusion: "O tidingsss of comfort and joy, comfort and joy, O tidingsss of comfort and joy!"

"What is…?"

Tonks, who was conjuring fairy lights on the table behind us, hair currently as candy-striped as her robes, reminded him helpfully, "Paracelsus?"

"What is Paracelsus doing?" he asked, actually curious as we moved on to the garlands.

"Par and Acel were singing along."

"That was the sound of a snake singing?"

"Of two, yes."

Sirius shook his head, albeit it with a pained look, and handed me another garland. Par and Acel treated me to another few verses of "God rest you merry, Hippogriff," until Sus hissed at them to shut it, upon which the 'necklace' slipped from around my neck and down my shirt. "Okay. That's it. Bedtime for Runespoorsss."

"But Mère."

"It's not even."

"Lunchtime yet."

I pointed them towards the door as they slithered out from under my shirt, down my pants leg, and onto the floor. "Time is irrelevant – lunchtime even more so," before joining Tonks on the coffee table. "I think being a 'mother' would be easier if my 'child' couldn't talk back to me already."

Life, though, despite the adoption-that-I-had-no-say-in-but-am-still-pleased-about and Sirius's unpleasant feelings towards my, er, boyfriend, is pretty nice. Granted, Paracelsus knows too many Christmas carols for a snake's own good (I was woken to a rousing wizarding version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" on Christmas morning by Par and Acel, while Sus used wider variety of swear words to curse them then I thought I'd shared with my Runespoor), but it was an enjoyable break. I was with Sirius – with family – for the first time that I could remember for the holiday, and I cooked Christmas dinner not because I had to but because I wanted to, and I had the help of Mrs. Weasley, Ari's much more cooking-capable husband Ephraim Cauldwell (a shortish, balding man with some Middle Eastern blood in him – a Lebanese mother, I later learned – who'd a wild sense of humour and worked for the MoM's Ludicrous Patents Office, so I guessed that was necessary. A Hufflepuff during his time, he'd not been a member of the original Order, but now worked as most members in the Ministry did, subtly recruiting and trying to find Voldemort's spies), and Fleur, who was still, surprisingly, dating Bill. Remus was there, most the hols (and had, at last, been conned into drinks with Tonks, who'd returned late in the evening with a very embarrassed-looking Remus) at least, as were Ari and Ephraim's kids (thirteen-year-old Oliver, who was, sadly enough, evenly matched with me in chess, and First Year Alycone, who spent the whole time in the library reading her comic books), Tonks and her parents, and Hermione.

"You know," said Hermione to me when she was helping me decorate the banisters the morning after she arrived, "I heard the strangest rumour Thursday afternoon, once it was clear you, Ginny, Ron, and The Twins were all missing from class."

Disinterestedly – I was too busy trying to get the magic snow Sirius had conjured to fall every few feet off my black skirt, having had to kneel in a pile of it to wrap the red, green, and gold ribbons around the balusters, - "Oh, really?" I looked up from my work to peek at her, "Education decree come out saying smiling between classes forbidden now?"

"Er, no," she told me, handing me a few boughs to twine with the ribbons, "something about you and Michael Corner, actually."

"Is the twit saying that I agreed to go with him, 'cause I told him-"

"That's actually rather the thing. He's saying that you, er, told him you were already seeing someone."

That wasn't too bad. I could handle that by saying he's lying or picking up whomever Smoke and Mirror has me dating this issue… I think I'm supposed to have started dating Simon Antila-Delphinis of the Glasgow Home for Battered Owls after meeting him at a Halloween party in Guilford. I told dear Hermione this and moved up the stairs to another set of balusters, taking the moment to glare at the framed headlines of The New Amsterdam Times and The Damascus Sun, which were of my article released over the summer; the front pages that declared Sirius a free man were on the next level. The hall, like my room and most of the first floor, had been redecorated as the result of the great boredom of being stuck at HQ alone while waiting for the court decision to come through and Tonk's mother, Andromeda "Andi" Black Tonks, wishing to remove the stain of her and Sirius's childhoods in the house. It was warm-wooded and painted a very Gryffindor Red as particular insult to The Most Ancient and Noble House of Black; the newel post was a Lion's head, and Sirius's pardon, signed by Fudge and the twelve Heads of Department, was in a place of honour on the wall opposite the stairs, surrounded by a few pictures of Sirius and Andi in their youth, a shot of Andi and Ted's wedding as well as one of my parents' at their own, and, followed by a fourteen-year gap, a few of myself and Tonks (who constantly removed hers). It was an ideological war against the house, and Andi was bound, set, and determined to win and, as I later learned, the provider of every un-conjurable decoration in the house. The manager of a hotel in Liverpool, The Sleeping Dragon also doubled as a hideout and infirmary for injured Order members; from what I gathered, she was not one to be crossed.

"Actually, er, Harry," why do people still call me that? Éléonore or Alexandrie-Margaux or Henriette or even Alex, I'm not picky, it's just I have like five dozen names as it is, and from what Ari says it would be a nice gesture of support if I were to add the Black name to the mix; I don't need any extra ones, "Michael sort of said he, er, sort of… followed you after DA the night you disappeared…" I about tied myself to the baluster. "… and he, er, claimed that, er, Professor Snape sort of, er, took you somewhere and that he stayed there for about an hour or so but you never came out…"

I put my head into a pile of freshly fallen snow. I should have just kneed the guy and been done with it. You can't just be nice to them, no, let them down easy – that was obviously a mistake – you've got to grind them into the floor and make them weep in humiliation to prevent things like this from happening.

Christmas was great, though. I got a whole bunch of wicked DADA books and all of that, and Sirius gave me this string of pearls that's been in 'the family' for years and took a week to get all the nasty charms off, and it would make him vindictively happy if I would wear it. While I considered that him doing something like that– rather like "Cousin Andi's" war on the house – seemed more indicative of him needing serious psychotherapy then anything else, I did like them, and so I did.

What really pissed me off though was the fact that, despite the fact I've seen the man semi-unclothed, he didn't even send me a rock like the wardens of Azkaban South did. I mean, I struggled long and hard to think of something to get him that was nice but practical, screamed that I liked him a lot but wasn't trying to force myself on him, that I recognized to a certain degree he didn't mind the clinginess as must as I thought he might but still not too clingy (something that a watch or a sweater would have failed to do), and that, while I we both liked each other, understood that I was still twenty years his junior and understood that he, at least, had made no commitments (mine, being I hoped somewhat apparent from our arguments for why I shouldn't like him, somewhat understood but not reinforced by my gift. I wonder if guys recognize the trouble we girls go to for them. Raising infant Runespoors, trying to find the perfect gift, not flying off the deep end at them even though our hormones scream it… So yeah, I bought him this set of potioners' knives. Really nice, expensive, knife sets that came in one of those leather deals that fold out to reveal the contents, handmade by some guy in Japan that makes like twenty of these things a year. Initials even embossed into the fold-out leather cover. I've no idea if he even has something like it, but there are apparently waiting lists for these knives that the Girl-Who-Lived can bypass by being, well, alive.

But do I even get a stupid card? No. I tried not to let my anger show, but Tonks picked up on it and teased me about it. She teamed up with Fleur to get me a whole carton-full of the underwear in those catalogues they sent me – I'm talking about silk-and-lace contraptions here – which is, of course, like the most embarrassing thing in the world to open when your, er, adoptive father is sitting right next to you, but at least I didn't discover the copy of the Kama Sutra or the phials of contraceptive potions hidden beneath all the lingerie until I was stuffing the things into my dresser, thankfully alone, much later. I swear I never should have introduced them.

Still, though I tried to hide it, I was pissy again, and was trying for the sake of everyone in the house to avoid human contact until I'd a chance to vent at Severus by hiding in my room, reading the law books Ari gave me. A week after New Year's I was doing just that when a knock came at my door. Mrs. Weasley poked her head in, and in a conspiratorial way, said, "Harry, dear, could you come down to the kitchen? Professor Snape would like a word with you."

It took me a minute to register what she'd said. When I had, I dropped the heavy tome to the floor, jumped up from where I lay on my bed, and nearly stepped on Paracelsus thrice in the whole process. "Severus is here? You know why?" I was both giddy at the thought of seeing him (stupid schoolgirl reaction) and ready to give him a piece of my mind (a reaction I cherished more) for forgetting me.

Only slightly admonishingly, "Professor Snape, dear. Now come on, quickly, he says he can't stay long."

"Of course not," I murmured darkly as I followed her down.

The two men were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table when I entered, both with their own versions of death-glares on their faces. The faucet was dripping again, and the splashes each drip made sounded impossibly loud as it hit the porcelain sink, as did the slight rattle of the glass panes of the windows in their frames, a winter's windstorm building outside. Sirius was in his habitual costume, a bit turn-of-the-century with its waistcoat and pocket watch to pass without notice in Muggle London, was sitting with his arms crossed to my left. Severus, looking as if he'd just come in from the storm, had the air of damp wool mixed with his usual minty smell, and looked severe in his all-black ensemble in the cheery kitchen Andi had made, with droplets of water falling from his hair onto the almost priestly jacket below. You could almost swim in the tension, it was so thick.

"Er, hi," I said, announcing myself.

Snape turned and looked at me, face framed between the damp black curtains of his hair, his eyes softening at the sight of me. I smiled a little at him. I was still angry he'd forgotten the first major gift-giving occasion since we'd been, er, together, but it wasn't that big a deal. Not now. He wasn't dead, which meant we were still in the free and clear with Voldemort, and that was all that mattered.

"I was supposed to see you alone, Éléonore, but Black-"

"I'm her godfather – and her adoptive father, Snape, and it is my every right to make sure you don't take advantage-"

"What I do in my personal time in no way involves-"

Sirius jumped to his feet, his chair clattering to the floor behind him, "It does when it's my daughter you're-"

Severus, whose chair at least only flew back several feet, "I resent-"

"I should have you arrested-"

"You would-"

"Gentlemen!" I shouted at the both of them, "Please, behave yourselves. Andi only just finished redecorating in here, and if you wish to kill each other you'll have to wait until the storm calms down enough to do it outside. So, please, both of you, sit." They both looked at me as if they'd forgotten I was in the room. Slowly, each took their respective seats, and I joined them, sitting at the head of the table so that neither could say I was favouring the other. "Sirius, one day you're going to have to accept that the little girl you left behind when they threw you in Azkaban has grown up, and you can't control who I choose to date." Across the table, the Potions Master offered my godfather a sneer. "And you, Severus, have to remember that Sirius is my godfather and has adopted me into his family; and, like it or not, he's important to me and I'm not going to stop caring for him just because the two of you didn't get along when you were in school." Sirius smirked back at him. "Now, what brings you to the dear Black homestead today?"

The men eyed each other across the table, not turning to look at me as either spoke. It was rather annoying, not that they weren't looking at me, but that they continued to look at each other as if they were in a duel. Not for the last time, I wished I could do magic over the holidays so I could summon their wands away, tie them to their chairs, and force them to get along.

Slowly, "The Headmaster has sent me to tell you, Éléonore, that it is his wish for you to study Occulmency this term."

This confused me. "If I'm not being processed, why does he think I need to protect my mind?"

"How do you know what Occulmency is?" asked my adoptive father, "It's a very… uncommon piece of magic."

"Severus told me ages ago. But that doesn't answer why."

With a small smile, "Because the headmaster thinks it's a good idea, as none of the common rules seem to hold with you. You'll receive lessons once a week, but no one, least of all Dolores Umbridge, must learn what you're doing."

"Will you be teaching me?"

Severus nodded, Sirius exploded. "Why can't Dumbledore teach her? I'll not allow you to use this as an excuse to dally with my daughter."

"You know as well as I, Black, the headache the headmaster is dealing with between the Ministry's idiocy and the Dark Lord's plans; I've he'd the spare time, I daresay he might teach Éléonore, but, since he does not and I'm the only other capable teacher…" he let the words hang.

"If I hear you're using these Occulmency lessons to do anything other then teach Éléonore, you'll have me to answer to."

"Surely you've realized by now how much Éléonore is like her parents?"

Proudly, "Yes, I have."

"Then you'll know that she never does anything she does not wish to do."

Sirius pulled his wand, and I shouted at him to stop. He didn't, and Severus proceeded to draw his.

Was it really necessary for them to bait each other like bears? Neither of them had grown up, it was obvious, since the war last ended. I weighed my options. I could cast a good petrificus on each of them, receive two more warnings about my blatant disregard for the RRUW that Fudge would run with (Ari, I don't think I've mentioned, wants me to give an interview to a proper reporter even though no one's seen or heard from Rita Skeeter in almost two months; she told me this in the letter thanking me for the rare crucifix ground beetle Paracelsus caught for her). Or I could try to talk the two men down, but when had that ever worked? So, quite simply I thought, I told them, "I'll be in my room if you need me," and headed back upstairs, past the headlines of my previous article in Chinese, Arabic, and Italian.

The noise continued for several minutes downstairs, and I tried to pick up where I'd left off in The Every-Wizard's Guide to Injunctions, but my thoughts kept drifting back downstairs. I loved these two men more deeply then I would have ever thought possible I could love anyone when Hagrid liberated me from Azkaban South, in two very different ways. Sirius was the overprotective father I'd been denied the chance to have, and Severus was the man who was able to look past so much and love me for me. It'd be too much to ask them to get along… but, in a guilty sort of way, I wished Sirius would get a hex in for me, forgetting me at Christmas after I spent so much energy thinking of what to get him. Bastard. I should have listened to Paracelsus and gotten him "bubbly-stuff" to clean the cauldrons with.

Ah, who am I kidding? First chance I get I'll probably forgive him. Yell at him for a few minutes, but forgive him nonetheless.

I about jumped when there came a knock at my door. Before I could call, "Enter," Severus was already inside. He handed me a small package about the size of three CD cases stacked together, said quietly, "I must get going," and then closed the door behind him on the way out. In fact, if it wasn't for the plainly wrapped package in my hand, I would have sworn I imagined it.

For the second time that night I dropped my book to the floor and tore off the brown paper. Inside was a dark blue velvet box, the kind expensive jewellery comes in, larger then a box for earrings but smaller then a necklace case from what I remembered of commercials on the Dursley's telly or pictures in black-and-white in Sunday papers. With held breath I opened the box, revealing a thin solid-banded silver bracelet with three of what were probably actual diamonds set within it. I turned it around in my hands for a moment, admiring the present, taking back every evil thought I'd ever thought of Severus for forgetting Christmas – he'd probably not wanted to alert anyone to the fact he was sending me a gift, I thought, let alone one so obviously expensive. Or not wanted Sirius to blow up at me for getting something so fine from his archnemesis. It was then, as I was examining the bracelet in my hands, I caught the engraving on the inside:

Sic ego nec sine te nec tecum vivere possum.

It took me a long while in the library the next morning with a Latin dictionary and long sleeves that fell far enough to hide the existence of the gift from Sirius for the moment, but I was able to translate it. Roughly it said:

Thusly, I can not live either with or without you.


	15. In Which I Have Dreams of Things That Will Be or May Be Only

I spent most of the day after we returned to Hogwarts – we being the admitted odd grouping of myself, the youngest four members of the Weasley clan, Oliver and Alycone Cauldwell, and Hermione heading for Hogwarts who'd been "chaperoned" by Bill (who, even I have to admit, looked hot in his dragon-leather coat), Fleur (who was rather busy with Bill towards the front of the bus, Tonks (whose hair was bubblegum pink), and Remus (who was not-so-unfortunately on the receiving end of most of Tonks's trips, falls, and slips from the wildly moving Knight Bus) – worrying about the next night.

I met him in his office, but we flooed to his – locked, warded, and what-not-ed – room from here. He was taking no chances, he told me, with someone following me again or my safety. "I don't get it," I told him, taking a seat on the couch in his main room, "I've done some reading on Legilimency and everything I can gather says you need eye contact, and all that's really moot because there are enough spells on Hogwarts to keep anyone safe from mental attacks, even me. So why does the Headmaster want me to learn Occulmency?

You'd not believe me when I tell you he smiled at me from his seat next – yes, next – to me on the couch. His arm was draped in that possessive way of male arm-draping that extends around your shoulders and just invites you to lean against them. I didn't, but only out of great willpower, figuring that we had to maintain some semblance of a professor-student relationship here. Though this was after I'd given him a kiss in thanks for his present. Honestly, I'd no idea there was a romantic bone in the man's body. It overjoyed me to know that I'd brought it out in him, even if it was smoothing as simple as a Christmas present or a smile. "Éléonore, the usual rules have never applied to you. Somehow, when The Dark Lord failed to kill you, a connection was forged."

"The parseltongue," I said in understanding.

"Amongst other things we may not know about, yes, in essence. The evidence suggests that when your mind is most relaxed and vulnerable – when you are asleep, for instance," I blushed a little, as my mind, like the rest of me, had been at its "most relaxed and vulnerable" in his bed, "- you are sharing The Dark Lord's thoughts and emotions, and he yours."

"So I get visions of things Voldemort is doing, like attacking Mr. Weasley."

"Yes."

I straightened a little and turned more towards him. "This is great. Don't you see? I can spy inside his head, and save you from having to risk your life to spy on him-"

"It's too dangerous, Éléonore-"

"No more dangerous then you having to go to those meetings of his, and without the risk of a crucio if you think the wrong thing," I countered. But he'd not been summoned to a meeting in weeks, and, if Voldemort was planning anything, it was nothing he knew.

His hand came under my chin and turned me, a tad forcibly if I do say so, to face him, and the man's black eyes burned into me, so much so I wondered if he was using Legilimency on me. "I've done many things in my life I'm not proud of, Éléonore Potter, but I'll be damned to perdition's most searing flames before I let you endanger your life to do the same."

"If I recall," I said to him, wondering exactly what he'd done that he so hated himself for and what had brought this conversation about, "Dante sent manufacturers of discord to the eighth circle of Hell, and it was as if the dead of winter there."

"This isn't a joke, Éléonore," he said more seriously still.

"And I'm not making one. The only thing I'm saying is, if there is a God, or if it is Merlin who judges us, or God is as dead as Nietzsche claimed and we must then judge ourselves, it is not to any hell that anyone would send you but yourself. You… converted, dare I say? And converts are loved, and the lovers of justice too sit close to the zenith of heaven." I kissed him gently then, crossing the ineffable distance between us to touch those lips which may have spoken curses that had maimed and killed, tortured and destroyed once upon a time, but now with their very existence championed the Light and the destruction of all he'd once held dear.

He pulled away, whispering, perhaps to himself, a line from The Aeneid, and I wondered before quickly killing that line of thought if he too had been hid away somewhere and escaped into the land of others' imaginings, into Shakespeare and Homer, Dante and Virgil, or whatever other authors whose books he could get his hands on, people with newer names but dreams no less grand in their scope. I would not think to myself how many books, any of them, some designed for a child's mind and other's that I still struggled over, had been my escape when I could get them. But I was escaped from Azkaban South now; HQ, unlike my aunt's home, was becoming a shrine to my achievements with pictures I'd never seen of myself and my parents on its walls and told of my existence to the world with newspaper clippings and legal documents. I'd not have to think about Azkaban South again until I turned seventeen and could legally hex them for everything they've done to me. How I relish the day. "Easy is the descent to Hell," his voice was less sharp then usual and sotto voce, and I could feel his breath against my face as he spoke; "the door of dark Dis stands open day and night. But to retrace your steps and come out to the air above, that is work, that is labour!"

"And if any can do it," I encouraged, with a small smile, "it would be you. Though I still don't see how long-distance spying could endanger anyone."

"The Dark Lord was processing Nagini's mind at the time you entered, shall we say, his. Perhaps it was because of this different space, one not his own, he realized you were there – or so the Headmaster believes. And, if you can share his thoughts…"

I finished his sentence, suddenly very anxious to start, "…then he can share mine. Make me see things, do things – like procession, only not, because the connection is not forced."

"And that brings us back to Occulmency."

After the first lesson, I felt like I'd gone through the wringer, and fell into my usual dazed stupor on his couch, and woke hours later, having been moved to his bed, filled with a dread fear that I could not name but had me clutching my chest like the dead do – arms crossed, clasping shoulders, feeling empty inside – and panicky, though Severus's arm was a comfortable weight around my waist. I'd love to say that, when I turned to face him, noticing as I did my shoes and winter robe had been removed and that he was once again sans shirt, that I fell straight back into sleep. I can't, though, and buried my face in his chest instead, and worried about whose dreams I was dreaming and whether or not I was going around the deep end, even as my curious fingertips traced patterns on the sleeping man's skin, wondering that I'd been allowed close enough to enter this man's hidden world and forgetting how I could ever have lived without him. I was safe with him and he could make me smile… even when I was filled with dread thoughts about the War we were both a part of.

The Daily Prophet, Smoke and Mirror, and International Wizarding Post each answered my fears the next morning with the black-and-white photographs of eight angry, insolent men and a single witch, sallow now and sullen, but with the remnants of patrician beauty that reminded me sickly of my first encounter with Sirius in the Shack not even two years ago, and boldfaced type. I stared wide-eyed at the pictures, all but quaking as Hermione read aloud from the Smoke and Mirror:

Azkaban Breakout!

9 Escape, 6 Die

The Ministry of Magic announced the successful escape of at least nine known Death Eaters from Azkaban Prison early this morning.

Work crews, which have been stationed around the clock since it was revealed in Sirius Black v. DMJ that Mr. Black, 35, escaped three years ago from the prison by use of animagery, noticed that the prisoners grew unusually rowdy as the night wore on. Concerned, they flooed in for additional security from the Auror Division, which arrived just in time to see the rubble fly from what remained of the Maximum Security wing, where all nine escapees were housed.

A pale looking man with short, matted locks and a long, twisted face leered up at me from the first picture. Antonin Dolohov, the legend read. He and four others had brutally killed Mrs. Weasley's brothers, Fabian and Gideon Prewett, and hung their corpses side by side in The Atrium of the MoM in the darkest hours of the First War. The man whose picture was next to his in the Prophet was pockmarked, greasy, and obviously bored with the whole proceeding was Augustus Rookwood, the Death Eater spy in the Ministry who'd probably helped with the murders of Ron's uncles.

Hermione continued: …during which Antonin Dolohov; Sebastian and Elijah Mulciber; Augustus Rookwood; Bellatrix, Rastaban, and Rodolphus Lestrange; Thorfinn Rowle, and Justinian Travers were able to escape, while a tenth, Julius Yaxley, was killed in the struggle as Aurors tried to contain the situation…

That was where I had seen the woman before: she Bellatrix Lestrange. Somewhat aquiline, pale and dark both, with eyes heavily-lidded and a pouter's mouth, you couldn't deny that she was Andi's big sister, or that Andi could have been her after fourteen years surrounded by Dementors, or that Bellatrix, had she not, could have been her twin. I had never seen Bellatrix a day in my life, but I had seen her features in Andi and Sirius, and Tonks's too when she shifted her features in a way that made me think it was the face she'd been initially born with, and for some reason this filled me with a deep, unreal dread.

… one Auror was killed in the struggle and three other maximum security prisoners – Cassius Anderson, 57, sentenced to life in 1988 for the murder of his wife, three children, and nephew; Lev Tonio, 88, sentenced in 1932 to life for the rape and murder of at least four pureblood girls; and Ina Tepes, 50, convicted for her part in the 1972 "Black Widow Affair" – were also killed as a result of damages to the prison. At least three Aurors suffered minor injuries, including, on an interesting note, the niece of the infamous Bellatrix Lestrange, Jr. Auror N. Tonks. Mrs. Lestrange, 44, was convicted alongside her husband, brother-in-law, and Bartemius Crouch Jr. for the torture and permanent incapacitation of Frank and Alice Longbottom in November 1981. It has been suggested by some that Azkaban's first and previously only escapee, Mr. Black, who happens to be Mrs. Lestrange cousin, may have played a hand in the attack upon the prison.

"I'd sooner be sent back to that place then help Bellatrix out of it," Mr. Black told reporters early this morning. "If anyone in the family got her out it was [Lucius] Malfoy on [He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named]'s orders. Now leave me to eat my eggs in peace!"

Lucius Malfoy, 41, when reached declared that it is, "a miscarriage of justice to have my family's good name slandered so," and that neither he nor his wife, Mrs. Lestrange's youngest sister, Narcissa, have seen or spoken to Mrs. Lestrange, "in ages." Ron snorted at that, but I kept on staring at Bellatrix and her maddened features, as if her picture alone bespoke of the horrors that were yet to come.

I delved into Occulmency with a furry after the breakouts that might only be described as a strong desire not to die, and a large bit of that borne of fear. I still continued with Quidditch practices three times a week, the DA (which had now moved on to shield charms with the notable absence of Michael Corner, whose rumour followed me around for two weeks, when the next addition of the Star and Stave claimed to have seen me at a performance of Candide in Paris with The Weird Sisters' bass player's illegitimate son, Andre Blatchford), and my visits to Severus's office. Only now, rather then cleaning cauldrons most the time, I was studying Occulmency for some portion of nearly all my visits. I was rather unsuccessful at it, or so I thought, and would have the worst headache afterwards, like someone had given my brain a hammer and it was trying to make its way out through my forehead in protest at having been used so much. I'd good reason to master the art quickly, but, the more I practiced, the more I felt dirtied, like something was creeping inside of me and taking over my thoughts. There would be times when, for no apparent reason whatsoever, I'd suddenly feel happy or angry or unbearably annoyed. By Valentine's Day it was driving me mad. I was having dreams not only of the hallway with the single door, but of Voldemort and the Death Eaters too…

"Severus?" I asked one night, when I actually was cleaning cauldrons in his classroom (Paracelsus playing the bubbles), and he was grading papers.

He looked up curiously. Such an expression is not one that normally comes to pass across his features, mostly because he knows too much to be curious about anything else. Satisfied with his lot in life, I think that's the best way to describe it, maybe not entirely happy, but satisfied, as if knowing it could be no other way. To see him curious is a real treat for someone like me who cares about such things, and usually, I dare to say, his curiosities involve me. "Yes, Éléonore?"

I set down my sponge and turned towards him then, leaning back against the counter and feeling the back of my (Fleur-bought) shirt soak up the splashed water, "I'm worried."

"About what?" His sharp quill was not for much longer in his hand.

"The dreams," I'd told him of those, and often he'd wakened with me when I had them in his rooms. I was staying nearly every-other-night with him, sometimes because we'd worked so late, and others because, at some point we'd start kissing… and the draw we felt to each other would have us making-out on his bed by some point, and before anything much more could happen Severus's atypical Slytherin morals kicked in and told him, while it was okay to put his tongue in my mouth, he should wait until he was no longer my professor to do anything more to me, despite my amiability to 'more' and all of its companions. It was very annoying, but did mean that I'd become very good at sneaking back up to Gryffindor Tower early in the mornings. "They're getting worse. Last night I heard Rookwood tell Voldemort he'd been lied to and saw Avery tortured. The more I practice, the more often I seem to have these visions. I half-think I'm going mad."

Severus frowned a bit. "You are many things, but mad is not one of them."

"Then what is it? What do you call it – processed? 'Cause I don't know, I just feel so confused. Like I'm missing a fundamental part of everything that's going on around me and, if I just knew what it was, I might be able to make sense of it all, but, right now the pieces just don't fit… and the more I try and force them together, the more they spring apart in my hands." Merlin above, tears began to prick at my eyes. "I feel like I'm just filling space until whatever needs to happen happens so I can do whatever it is I must do!"

"That isn't true."

"Isn't it? I'm sitting nice at school while others fight the war I reopened, unable to even do the one thing that would make me useful!"

"Éléonore, you fail to see it because you are too near the problem."

"Perhaps, but my accomplishments – whatever they may be – are nothing. I'm just waiting, it seems, to turn seventeen so I can be of use. I can't join the Order 'til then, can't do anything in my own right 'til then; probably can't even get you do more then kiss me 'til then," I added petulantly, "and it all seems just useless when I feel like I've not grown in ages, that's I've always been as I am now my entire life, and be that fifteen or fifty, and two more years isn't going to change anything about me, or change what Voldemort will do if he ever gets his hands on me."

"Be that as it may, all things take time."

"And every moment it takes makes me more fearful the next shall be the last."

He took my hand. "Come with me," he said, and Paracelsus hissed that, if we weren't going to be mating, he'd just stay in the bubbles until I returned. Runespoors, I tell you!

"Where're we going?" I asked, curious myself now.

"If Occulmency won't keep the Dark Lord out of your mind, there has to another way to do so. Minds are not meant to be shared – it goes against the grain of nature, and therefore magic itself – and so there must be a way to sever the connection. We must therefore find it."

Which meant books, and he'd a quite a bizarre collection of tomes. Of course, I was able to distract him at one point (oh, the advantages of shirts which button down the front), during which I managed to get us both at least partially unclothed, getting him to pin me to the couch in the most delightful way as I invited him to put his hands in places not usually considered polite for student/teacher interaction before he realized what I was trying to do and, with admirable self-control, went back to the books. But, still, it was a brilliant time while it lasted, as his tongue laved my mouth and his hands fondled my breasts and started to venture lower while my hands ran along his back and thighs.

Stupid "you're my student I shouldn't do you" attitude. Well, that sounded a little crude to ever have come out of Severus's mouth. More likely he'd say something like, "Éléonore, while you know I have strong feelings for you, but I respect you too much to ask you to do anything that might compromise our relationship…." et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. He probably actually believes that too. Stupid men.

Admittedly, it's refreshing.

Refreshing compared to what, you ask? Isn't Severus the only man you've ever kissed, let alone the only one who you've let close enough to do so? Haven't you, in your endless wisdom, sent your only other suitor, dear Mr. Corner, age fifteen, off with a wave of your hand?

How I wish I could simply answer with a yes all these pressing questions! Oh, Severus is the only person I've ever kissed alright, and certainly the only one who've I've ever even entertained the possibility of doing anything like kissing with. But my 'only other suitor'? Hardly.

No, Michael only opened the floodgates. Even as Star and Stave announced me as "going" with Andre Blatchford, boys aged fourteen plus throughout Hogwarts began to notice that, hey, the (very rich and to some extent pretty) potential saviour of the wizarding world, Baronne Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Black Potter de Calais, was not dating Mr. Blatchford, his half-brother Mr. Antila-Delphinis, Mr. O'Malley, Count Philipp, or any other whose name the press had joined it with, which meant, in their minds, I was obviously up for grabs to whoever would care to ask me. This list includes, but is not limited to:

1\. Roger Davies, who was amongst the first to ask me, coming up to me as I was leaving the library and asking me unnecessarily loud voice if I'd go with him to Hogsmeade, necessitating in the perpetuation of the vague non-falsehood that I was flattered (he was two years above me and had been Fleur's three-month boyfriend last winter) but seeing someone else. He was the first to ask who. I told him Ambrose Loveless, whose father is the editor of the Smoke and Mirror, but I don't think he bought it. On that note, note to self: with the repartitions I get from Sirius Black v. The Daily Prophet News Network, buy more stock in the DPNN. I'm currently up to 8.3% of the shares and already have (well, Sirius has, on my behalf) influenced the paper not to publish any more Potter-Snape stories, even if they're true now.

2\. Anthony Goldstein, who apparently lives on the same street as the Lovelesses and knows for a fact that Ambrose is (his terms, not mine) a poof, and who also thought I only said that I was only to get out of having to go with Davies. Now, as Davies is the Ravenclaw Quidditch Captain, a Seventh Year, and handsome enough to have been one of Fleur's boyfriends, I think this is a little narcissistic of Anthony and tell him so. He promptly informs me that he is by far the better conversationalist in addition to being fairly well-endowed (as opposed, apparently, to just the latter), and I smile at him and (as this was during a meeting of the DA), demonstrate iaceo for the class on him.

3\. Ernie Macmillan, while I was talking with Oliver at the Hufflepuff table. Oliver was asking me of all people what electives to take next term ("Anything but Divs," I told him, "and talking to a Muggle-born is probably better then any Muggle Studies class, but if you plan on going into the Ministry I hear it's suggested"). Ernie, while somewhat pompous, at least took my rejection with more dignity then either Anthony or Roger, though he too expressed interest in who I was seeing. This time I said it was none of his damn business, and he, at least, left it at that.

4\. Cormac McLaggen, whom I personally call "Cormac the Annoying" and variations thereof, quite loudly (what is it with that? Do boys think the louder they ask the more likely girls are to answer in the affirmative?) in the Gryffindor common room as I was trying to finish my charms essay before having to go to practice. Of course, the common room was at its fullest when he asked and I was aware of more then a few quills pausing and conversations dying off as people waited for my answer. Looking straight into his arrogant and foolhardy eyes, I answered, "Not now, not ever, not in this lifetime or the next," possibly a little too harshly, then added superciliously; "not if you were the last man on earth," before going right back to my essay, though I must admit it was hard to concentrate after that scene. I gave up after a while and went down to the pitch to fly for a bit on my own before practice, but was too angry to really enjoy it or practice – in fact, practice seemed only to aggravate me further – so I did the only logical thing for a girl in my position to do: I ranted.

Katie, Alicia, and Angelina were the only ones, obviously, for me to rant to in the changing room, but I don't think they minded. In fact, I think they found it rather amusing, which was irritating in and of itself. And long after they'd dressed they listened to me as I furiously ran a comb through my wet hair, though no comb in the world could ever settle my genetically messy hair.

"Harry," said Alicia at great length, a laugh in her voice that made me want to pummel something, "you know what the simple answer is, right?"

"A good curse in the-"

"The best way to keep people from asking you out when you claim to have a boyfriend already is to tell people who that boyfriend is," she finished.

I stared at her like she'd grown a second head and one of them, quite calmly, had offered me a bowl of tapioca. "Being seen with him might help," Katie offered, un-knotting the mess she'd left her shoelaces in so she could put them on again, "but the only guy anyone ever sees you with is Ron, or sometimes Fred and George."

"It is a boy, right? People talk, you know, you being so famous and all and without all the boyfriends like the papers say. I don't care what way you swing, I just want to know what page we're all on." I nodded at Angelina, somewhat surprised, "And it's not a Weasley?"

"Er, no," I admitted somewhat guiltily, as it were a betrayal of Severus just to say that much, "it's, er, something we'd both rather keep quiet for the moment."

The three chasers turned to look at each other in a simultaneous movement that made me wonder if I was missing key female pheromones or telepathic genes to know what I was supposed to do at this moment. At last Alicia, the brave one, "It's not Draco Malfoy is it?"

I was gagging before she even finished her question. "Ew, no!" I mean, gross! I'd sooner burke the guy then date him.

"Well, it's got to be some Slytherin if you're not sharing…" I made no move to deny, and they took it as an affirmative, and informed me that, so long as I wasn't selling Quidditch secrets to them, they didn't care if I was seeing a Slytherin so long as it wasn't Malfoy, and that they'd spread the word around (how, I don't know; obviously I don't have the female networking skills they seemed to have naturally acquired) not to bother me about who I was dating any more.

I dunno what they did, if anything, but the questions regarding my dating habits directed towards me, at least, died down some after. Not that I didn't overhear many a question regarding who I was dating, but at least they didn't ask me anymore, and that was all it took for me not to murder anybody.

Without Severus and the DA, I think might have been extremely unhappy as the term wore on. February turned bitterly into March, which, bearing spring at last, turned into April, and my days went on in a pattern that spoke of forced repetition. My Occulmency lessons with Severus had turned into research sessions, which at least left me with fewer dreams of corridors that I couldn't place, though I did find myself doubting my sanity as it continued on. If Occulmency wasn't working, the thought between us had gradually shifted to the point that we should treat Voldemort's intrusions not as an attack but a disease – the way the mentally ill hear voices and see things that aren't there. There were ways of what could best be called warding a mind to help keep the mentally ill from hearing or seeing what wasn't there, but there was a hesitation to do so between us until we found a way that was certain to work without ill effects. The DA was a similar love-hate relationship, wherein I felt immense pride in my students for leaning so well what I taught them as best I could but not a little fear as well, because I was a child teaching other children to fight in a war only some of them seriously believed was going on around us. By the week before Easter we were beginning Patroni. Everyone was keen to practice them, calling the glittering forms some managed to produce "pretty," and not understanding that it doesn't matter what they look like, so long as they protect you. Dementors don't exactly attack in safe, risk-free environments like the Room of Requirement provided. I wondered aloud where we could find at boggart, but people shushed me quickly, calling me a "killjoy." I was about to respond that it was my job as their drill sergeant to kill all joy relating to the "prettiness" of their spells and remind them that they were integral parts of my plan for keeping them alive, not enhancing their prom ensembles or whatever other lunacy they were thinking, when there came a great silence surprising for a group of so many teenagers…

"Mizz Éléonore Potter ma'am," the elf squeaked as I asked what was wrong, ignoring the curious eyes of my classmates, who'd probably never seen an elf like Dobby in their lives, "Mizz Éléonore Potter ma'am… Dobby has come to warn you… but the house elves have been warned not to tell…"

I grabbed his arms before he could begin to flail himself and forcing him as still as was possible, which was quite hard given his size, "What's happened, Dobby?"

"Mizz Éléonore Potter ma'am… she… she…"

There was only one "she" I knew of that could terrify Dobby… "Umbridge?" Nodding, he pulled himself out of my grasp and began to run headlong at the nearest wall. "What are you waiting for?" I asked the DA, which was staring motionless around me, "Run! Get back to your dorms!"

All at once, a dozen doors sprang up around the room, some with a house crest upon them, others with a picture of a book or one of those symbols you see on a lavatory, and, not questioning the room's occupants began rushing for the doors nearest too them.

"Harry, come on!" Hermione yelled near the door that had a picture of a Gryffindor lion on it.

But I couldn't just leave – no, Umbridge would know we'd been warned and come after us again. I had to put a stop to this now, and there was only one way I knew to do that. "Go ahead, I'll try to head them off," I told my dorm mates before turning to Dobby, who was now appearing to test the elasticity of one of the tables and the various Dark detectors on it with his head. "Dobby – this is an order – go back to the kitchen and, if Umbridge asks you anything about warning me, lie and say no! And I forbid you to hurt yourself!" And, with a grateful smile, Dobby disappeared in the way house elves have of disappearing, leaving me quite alone in the Room of Requirement.

Hoping that the room would continue to be helpful, I closed my eyes and imagined something that looked like study carrel, filled with books that Umbridge couldn't take offence at, and hoped to all that was holy it worked. No one was more surprised then I when my eyes opened and I saw the room now looked like a tiny room you'd find off a large library, only with shelves full of reference books – everything from dictionaries and The Encyclopaedia Magica to legal books and 10 Things Every Witch Should Know: A Compendium of Not-So-Common Knowledge for the 20th Century – and school books. Not one to count my blessings, I ran to the desk, slammed myself into the chair there, opening the nearest book and pleased to see there were some notes in passably my own handwriting there to join me.

And then, with a silent prayer to whatever deity one prays to in times like these, I tried to calm my breath and look like I'd been doing nothing but studying.

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"Well, Miss Potter… I expect you know why you are here?" Fudge asked.

"Er, no?"

"You don't know why you are here?"

"Well, I assume it has something to do with Paracelsus scaring Malfoy, but last I checked Runespoors were only Level Four creatures and don't need a handler's licence. But, I mean, if anyone's qualified to care for one it'd be a Parcel Mouth like myself, and Paracelsus knows better then to hurt anyone. He was just curious, that's all. Probably wanted to sing him a song or something – he does that quite often, sing; somehow he's managed to learn every song on the Top 100 Countdown, including 'The Macarena'…"

Fudge looked at me incredulously, and I must admit the idea of a Runespoor singing (by necessity, in Parseltongue) Madonna or The Beetles is an astonishing and unwelcome idea to wrap one's head around, though I am keen to point out that "The Macarena" is, marginally, better then Christmas carols. Marginally. Still, his inattention allowed me a moment to sneak a look at Dumbledore, who was smiling a small smile at his moon-and-star patterned carpet.

"So you have ho idea why Professor Umbridge has brought you to this office? You are not aware that you have broken any school rules?"

"Nah – like I said, I never read anything about Runespoors not being allowed pets, but I'm sure Arietis Cauldwell would be willing to sort the situation out for us if you'd allow me to floo her…"

A vein in his temple, in a way oddly reminiscent of Uncle Vernon, began to twitch as he angrily added, "Or Ministry decrees?"

"Not that I know of – I've been limiting myself to three impossible, imprudent, and/or illegal acts a month per my adoptive father, Sirius Black's, wishes, and I'd hate to have gone over my quota already."

I thought that he might tear that ugly, lime green bowler of his apart in his hands, he was so angry. It was utterly amusing, despite the pulsing fear that somebody had tipped Umbridge off about the DA (for which I might as well go and pack my trunk, because there is no way in a cold hell that I am getting out of that), about my, er, relationship with Severus (in which case he's probably packing his bags now, ergo why he's not here at this moment, though usually they try to be more considerate to supposed victims), or whatever.

"So it's news to you, is it, that an illegal student organization has been discovered within this school?"

I don't think my I'm-so-innocent-it-hurts face fooled him.

And that's when they chose to bring in the informant. I pulled Paracelsus out of my pocket while we were waiting for Umbridge to bring the bastard who'd told on us to scold him while Dumbledore, sitting benignly behind his desk, offered everyone tea.

"I don't."

"Like that."

"Weasel-boy," Paracelsus informed me, wrapping around my wrist.

I glared at each of the heads in turn, "What have I told you about singing to strangersss?"

Par hung his head sadly, "Not to do it…"

"But I only wanted to-"

"Shut up, Acel! I told you that you and Par were being stupid."

Dumbledore handed me a cup of tea which Sus immediately dipped his head into in attempt to get the lemon from the bottom. I set both the Runespoor and the tea on the table beside me and shook my head.

A moment later, Professor Umbridge, trying and failing to sound like a concerned parent, entered with one of Cho's friends, Marietta. "Don't be scared, dear, don't be frightened." I thought I might gag at the Splenda sweetness of her voice. "It's quite all right now. You've done the right thing. The minister is very pleased with you." I restrained myself from snorting. Especially when they forced Marietta's hands away from her face, revealing sickly-looking pustules across her face spelling out, "SNEAK," in painful letters. Nevertheless, Umbridge managed to share the story Marietta wouldn't about the formation of the DA and that it was meeting tonight. "The purpose of Potter's meeting with these students was to persuade them to join an illegal society, whose aim was to learn spells and curses the Ministry has decided are inappropriate for school-age–"

"Wait a moment," I said suddenly, "I don't know what you're talking about. I was just studying in there – it's a lot quieter then the Library, and nobody to mind if I practice a spell in there. Professor Snape told me about the room; he helped me last year prepare for the Triwizard Tournament, and said the room was full of previous DADA textbooks. You know how we go through Defence teachers, there's practically a new book every year, so there're quite a lot of them. And as far as a secret society goes, we did think about creating a study group for our Defence OWL, but the lot of us decided it wasn't worth the bother after that decree back in September, whichever one it was, there've been so many."

"There was a meeting tonight Miss Potter, you cannot lie to me!" Umbridge shouted, making a dash towards me.

"A meeting? No, it was just me in there as always. Well, me and Paracelsus. We were just getting ready to leave, though, so I suppose if anyone else was meeting there, they'd be there now – I usually leave about this time to meet up with Ron and Hermione in the common room and hang out for a bit before dinner."

It was of no use, and before long they were bound to tie me down as the DA's leader – and then, next thing you know, Dumbledore is asking if they want his statement. I wanted to yell at him, ask him what exactly he was doing, and inform him that Ari could get me out of whatever mess I'd created for myself, but Fudge was by that point overjoyed and had forgotten about me entirely.

"Then you have been plotting against me!" he said, the kneazle who caught the puffskin.

Cheerfully, "That's right," the Headmaster confirmed.

Well, I wasn't having this, and would have protested if I hadn't suddenly found myself under a silencing spell, one I could only guess had come from Dumbledore. The accused him – him, Dumbledore, the greatest wizard alive, who I knew had maybe made some wrong choices regarding me and regarding all of the wizarding world but had done it all only because he thought it was the best, who had to have been a stupid kid like me once but had grown into a wizard that had defeated the greatest Dark Lord of his generation and had helped to save another from its own, who may have been many things that I didn't know but was a greater man than Fudge would ever be and shouldn't have had to lie for me like this because I was stupid enough not to realize Marietta had betrayed us – of building an army to take over the Ministry.

"Listen to me, Harry," he said, releasing his spell on me after the rest of them were knocked out, preparing his escape, "you must study Occulmency as hard as you can, do you understand me? Do everything Professor Snape tells you and practice it particularly every night before sleeping so that you can close your mind to bad dreams – you will understand why soon enough, but you must promise me-"

"But," surprised that Severus hadn't told him, angry that he was leaving, and knowing all to well what would come when he was gone, I pleaded with him, "Professor Dumbledore, it doesn't work-"

His eyes widened a bit, but that could have only been my imagination, and he grabbed my wrist. "Close your mind, you've got to try – you will understand."

And, suddenly, because of me, Hogwarts was without its Headmaster.

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As soon as I was back in the tower, I started packing my trunk. "Hermione," I told her after relating what had happened, "keep it discrete, but make sure the right people find out what really happened." I wasn't even bothering to fold anything as I threw everything I owned into my trunk. Hermione, being the neat-freak she was, was spelling everything out of the trunk and folding it neatly on my bed.

"And just where do you think you're going?"

"I, my dear Hermione, am not at liberty to share that information. Suffice to say that we are starting a band of Hogwarts' own Maquis, and every great guerrilla-leader must go into hiding. That and I think Malfoy might try and have me murdered in my sleep."

"Why?"

"Would he?"

"Kill you?" the heads informed me in turn, poking carefully out of my pocket, the lemon clenched around his tail, seeping into my robe thank-you-very-much.

Hermione and I both ignored them, and she followed me into the bathroom, where I was pulling by toiletries together, asking, "Are we talking about World War Two-style, rebelling-against-a-false-government Maquis, or are we going with a whole the-government-has-betrayed-its-own-ideals Star Trek-flavour of Maquis here? Why are we thinking Malfoy is going to murder you? And you can't exactly go into hiding – we've OWLS soon."

I blinked at her in a way I hope signified my entire feeling about OWLS at the moment. "I'm not planning on skipping out on class – I'm not that stupid, I'm just thinking we declare DADA and non-class time war against the overgrown toad and her lackeys. And I'm guessing, since its Fudge and not the entire Ministry I have a problem with, Maquis a la Star Trek – you'll have to explain that one to me sometime," I finished, heading back into our dorms.

"Well, after the Cardassians signed a peace treaty with the Federation, a number of Federation colonies were ceded to Cardassia…" she trailed off at my blank look. I lived in a cupboard for ten years and spent five more at a Wizarding school, neither of which, one might imagine, have cable. "My parents tape the seasons for me to watch over the holidays," she said with, oddly, something of a blush. "Anyway, let me get this straight: you want the DA, a handful of teenagers, to wage war against Umbridge, her Inquisitorial Squad, and whatever other Ministry agents may arrive, while you spend your time in an undisclosed location while somehow managing to go to class, and nearly everyone we know will face expulsion if we fail?"

I thought over it for a second, ignoring Paracelsus as he asked, "What?"

"Is a?"

"Cardassian?"

Before answering, "Yes, that about covers it. Get to The Twins as soon as possible – they've got to have something we can use in a situation like this – and work on something we can use to sent real messages to each other. I'll be in contact as soon as I can," I slammed my trunk shut. "This is what we've been working towards with the DA. We've got the know-how and the means to make Umbridge wish she'd never been born." I shrunk my trunk and stuck in the pocket with Paracelsus, who hissed in protest, and his lemon wedge, adding brightly, "See you in Charms tomorrow."

Between the map and the cloak, I managed to make it down to the dungeons avoiding everyone between the tower and Severus's rooms. I got Archimedes to let me in and, failing to find Severus actually in them, set my still shrunken trunk on the nightstand and proceeded to scrub down the countertops in his laboratory. He, with the other Heads of House, was probably on DEFCON 3 or something dealing with my latest blunder in some Fortress of Solitude-esque gathering point as McGonagall filled them in. I've no idea what he'd been brewing when he left earlier, but whatever it'd been had made quite a mess, and by the time I managed to scrape the last of it off the marble I was covered so much in it, sweat, and Mrs. Scower's Magical Mess Remover that I was forced to admit that the next dirtiest thing in Snape's quarters was myself, and that I should clean me next. My time was not spent in vain, though, for I'd already thought of a half-dozen Wheezes that could be used in the war against the establishment that was, even now, surely falling into place. There would tapioca in every inkwell Umbridge sought to use, spiders in every desk drawer, and at least one snackbox-ill student in every class she taught and proctored, so help me Merlin or my name wasn't Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Black Potter, Éléonore for short.

I enlarged my trunk and pulled a pair of pyjama bottoms and a Chudley Cannons shirt I'd inherited from Ron that was far too small for him but fell halfway to my knees. Peeling my uniform shirt off, I came to the conclusion that it would have to be burned to get the smell off. I was just coming to this conclusion for the pants I was slipping off as well when I heard the faint sound of Severus entering his bedroom, clearly not expecting to find me so (un)dressed there.

"Hey, Severus," I said, walking past him to grab a bath robe, which I tied around me before pulling off the last of my clothes from under it. "What was that mess you were making in your lab? I swear it took me at least two hours to chip it all off."

Seemingly not hearing my questions, he took a step into the bathroom after me, where I turned on the shower, riffled through the small cupboard within for a towel, and tested the temperature with my foot before delving into its relaxing spray. "Éléonore," he said at great length, "not that I'm not pleased to see you, what are you doing?"

"Taking a shower." I sniffed his shampoo distrustfully. It wasn't my usual gardenia, but it would have to do for the moment.

"And why are you taking a shower here as opposed to Gryffindor Tower?"

"Because I'm on the lamb from the overgrown frog."

In a tone that clearly indicated that a key piece of information was missing, "I see."

With a sign, I give in, "I'm starting a Maquis-cell in Hogwarts and, frankly, am bloody-well scared now that Dumbledore's gone. You- I-" I lather and try again, "I feel safe with you. I'll sleep on the couch if you want, or even go back up the tower, but I'd rather stay as close to you as possible. You're the only good thing left here and I'm going to try my damnedest to keep it that way."

"Why the Maquis? Why not die Weiße Rose or the IRA?"

"I'm open to other suggestions," I poked my head out from behind the curtain, "if you'd care to join me." That, of course, was too much to ask, and I was left to finish my shower and dress in my second-hand shirt (a repugnant, Runespoor orange with the black double-C of the Cannons on the front and their latest motto: Let's all just keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best splayed across the back) before joining him in the bedroom. I think he realized when I sat down next to him on the bed and began to finger-comb my damp hair just how serious I was.

"Éléonore-"

"I'm not asking you to marry me or anything, Severus; I'm just looking for a place to sleep at the moment, a place where I can feel safe. I've not ever met anyone with whom I've felt so safe, with who I can imagine myself being happy with, and being with forever. I never dreamed of what I might do next month or next year or with the rest of my life until I learned to love you, and I'm too God-damned fond of the idea you spawned in me that I might find a way to make it through this all to give it all up now. I know I'm not perfect – that I let the bastard get reborn in the first place, and that Dumbledore's gone because of me – but you're not perfect either, and I can live with that. I know I'm too young and too Gryffindor to really have a chance for this to work between us, but I'm willing to give it a shot if you are."

"You're an idiot for wanting to be with me, Éléonore," he informed me succinctly, cupping my face in his hands, "and doubly so for thinking we could never work." One of his hands travelled warmly from my cheek to my neck, dallying around my breast, and pulled me closer once it had fully embraced my waist; the other held my mouth firmly in place as he lowered me backwards onto the bed beneath him, and loved me as best a man who'd not make love to me could. And, despite the War and Voldemort and the coming of Educational Decree Twenty-Eight, all the boys that wanted me for their own trivial reasons and the not so trivial matter of my dreams of a long, dark corridor that ended with a basilica of eldritch glowing orbs, I was happy, and could not remember what my hands did before I held him, the most enigmatic man in the world.


	16. In Which I Rage Against the Dying of the Light

As I left Transfiguration about two weeks after Easter, McGonagall asked if I'd kindly meet her in her office. Once there I grabbed a handful of Ginger Newts and examined the pictures on her walls, surprised when I found one of the team after the Quidditch Cup third year and more surprised still when I saw an obviously Colin-taken picture of me about to start the third task last spring. I don't know why she was surprised, she was my Head of House after all, but it still shocked me into sitting down by her desk and wondering what I'd done to have so many people care about me and my wellbeing. I wasn't used to that and was fairly uncomfortable with the implication. I didn't need another parental figure in my life telling me that I shouldn't worry about the war, it'll come to me in time; that I'm crazy for loving Severus like I do and I should enter a convent or a nice arranged marriage with some guy I don't care about instead, all because maybe he and my father and my father's friends didn't get along when they were all in school together all of twenty years ago; that The Prank War of 1996 I've started, fashioned from the DA (minus Marietta, who was pressured into coming by Cho I know now and never really truly believed in our cause) plus those trustworthy ones who want Umbridge out too, is silly and useless. To them I say that, firstly, it is my life, and if Voldemort wants to end it that, yes, I should worry; secondly, for some reason McGonagall approves, and so Sirius shouldn't have a problem with a man who's reformed and risked his life for people like me and him; and, lastly, we are students and cannot fight the Ministry the way it fights, and so we must fight in a way that they do not know or understand: pranks.

I was somewhat concerned, though, about what McGonagall wanted to talk to me about. I was sort of hoping that it'd be something about my rebel forces using the skiving snackboxes in her class even though I've strictly ordered (by means of Paracelsus delivered orders or meetings held under invisibility cloak) them not to be used on any teacher whose place in the school is just. Knowing my luck (which is to say, I use up the good, I'm-not-going-to-be-murdered-today kind during the almost annual attacks Voldemort orders on me, leaving me with the bad, oh-my-God,-my-Head-of-House-has-figured-out-I'm-sleeping-in-the-same-bed-as-my-Potions-Master,-am-I-in-for-it-or-what sort to deal with the rest of the year), my Head of House has figured out I'm, er, sharing Severus's bed, if my luck (which is, as noted above, likely to be nonexistent until late May or June) holds, without the key piece of knowledge that he refuses to actually, er, sleep with me until I'm officially no longer his student. As this is likely to be the end of this term, as I'm likely to flunk potions despite my proficiency at removing them from almost any surface, I'm not too much more then peeved about it. Maybe it's a good thing in a way, 'cause rushing into anything is a bad idea as life will tell, but still. There are certain times when he's touching me that I just can't bring myself to care about his silly rules and I'm sure there are similar times for him, but, again, I see the point. It's become hard not to be visibly happy around him in potions. I half expected that, if I allowed myself to look as comfortable and cheerful as Severus made me feel in one of his classes, I'd be burned in effigy by my classmates. Only half certain, understand, because the other half of me thought they might burn me in actuality on the Quidditch pitch and invite the press.

I sighed, resigned to my fate, and helped myself to another Ginger Newt. I wondered briefly if she'd any chocolate biscuits, doubted it, and wrote a mental note to myself to buy a confectionary or three over the summer. Hey, if I'm as rich as they say, I might as well get some use out of all that gold; does no one but goblins any good as it is now. That makes my summer planning list something like this:

1\. Buy more stock in The Daily Prophet News Network. It makes my life happier

2\. Find a way to convince Sirius that my relationship with Severus is a good thing and, should it lead to anything more, I'd like his blessing in it so I might actually be able to have a Christmas dinner with the two of them and the rest of the family without anyone ending up in St. Mungo's.

3\. See if there's a "Potter Manor" or something in France; possibly visit Calais.

4\. Get Paracelsus to stop singing "The Macarena."

My life is so special. I mean, have you ever heard a snake sing "The Macarena?" It's like a nightmare, that's what it is, and I've decided that I must either smash all radios in existence or else glue my ears shut. The Runespoor in question had come out of my pocket and was starting to ask why we weren't doing something useful, like being at lunch or charming all the chairs in the DADA classroom to turn into frogs at random intervals, when McGonagall finally showed up, placed a pile of scrolls on her desk, and offered me a macaroon from her desk drawer.

"Well, Miss Potter, I decided to hold your career advisory meeting on the spur of the moment, so Professor Umbridge," (she said these two words together in a way that made me think it was the closest to swearing McGonagall had ever come), "who has expressed an interest in sitting in on the sessions, will not overhear. I hope you do not mind."

Paracelsus slithered out of my pocked and into the tin of Ginger Newts. "Er, sorry about him; I've not managed to school him in any form of manners quite yet." I'd not been prepared for this line of questioning. I was on the defensive, not at all ready to decide what to do with my future quite yet.

"Well, quite alright," she said with amazing dignity. "The purpose of this meeting is to talk over any career ideas you might have, and to help you decide which subjects you should continue into sixth and seventh years. Have you had any thoughts about what you would like to do after you leave Hogwarts?"

Despite the fact that I was now thinking about the future, which was something I'd rarely done in times past, all my hopes and dreams were just that – hopes and dreams. Oh, I have this really stupid idea that Severus would wholly romantically propose to me at the end of seventh year, that we'd get married that summer, and live happily ever after in the Wizarding style, taking the first few years after Hogwarts to raise our children (invariably in my dreams a son and two daughters or vice versa), and then go into something after the youngest had started Hogwarts, perhaps something at the reconstituted Ministry. Then I also have this less stupid but equally impractical idea that Severus and I will just go on as we are now until, at some point, one of us dies, and while he continues being an spy and teaching at Hogwarts, I continue being a leader of a rebellion based more on the Maquis-of-Star-Trek then the Maquis-of-WWII-France, only instead of leading children to war with Wildfire Whiz-Bangs and Decoy Detonators, I'm leading Wizards twice my age into real battle with Hellfire Curses and Dissection Spells. Neither of these is conducive to a society-approved, Galleon-earning job. "Er," I said eloquently, "not really, no."

"I find that surprising, Miss Potter."

"Well," I admitted hesitantly, "I mean, I have thought about it, Professor, just not that seriously. I mean, I suppose there's Quidditch, 'cause everyone tells me that I'm better then Charlie and he could have played nationally, but, as much as I love Seeking, I just can't see myself playing a game my whole life. I've thought about being an Auror too, but I just don't know. I'm tired of fighting already, and the War's barely begun. And I've talked to Tonks," well, I sort of had, between prank gifts, me keeping her up to date with my progress with Severus, and her keeping me informed on her goings on with Remus (he'd kissed her once, about a month ago, and promptly apologized, not trying anything since. Tonks said it was good headway), we'd written of serious things as well. How her mother was driving her crazy redecorating HQ, taking the whole let's-have-a-wall-of-family-pictures so much to heart that Tonks had felt it necessary one day to transfigure all the pictures of her in the house into chicks, and since then there'd been an escalating battle between Tonks and Andi about warding the picture wall and breaking said wards. Bill, possibly under Fleur's influence, was siding with Andi and the end result was the most warded set of photographs this side of the Moskva Museum of Wizarding History's photo history of the fall of the House of Romanov at the end of WWI, as well as Grand Duke Alexei's escape from the those who murdered the rest of his family and his reclamation of the Russian Wizarding Throne in 1921. I hear his grandson, Aleksandr IV, regards the place like a shrine. But, whatever, that's neither there nor here at the moment, "and so I know it's not all like Moody would have it, chasing after Dark wizards and fighting for your life all the time, and mostly paperwork, but I don't like fighting and I don't care for paperwork. Honestly, Professor, I doubt I'm going to live to be twenty, let alone have a career."

"Éléonore, we both know that that's not true," she said light-lipped.

Her use of my name surprised me, calmed me even. "Okay, well, maybe that's a bit histrionic. Still, that doesn't mean I've given any thought to what I'd seriously want to do with the rest of my life."

"Well, if this 'renegade study group' you led is any indication, I do think you should consider teaching."

I about laughed at her. "Teaching? Me?"

"You're quite good at it, it would seem. You inspire a certain desire in your students to learn – and that is a rare and valued quality in a teacher. As Head of Gryffindor House, I have access to the grades of those students whom you taught, and I must say they are drastically higher then those who did not attend your class. And not just in Defence Against the Dark Arts, Éléonore, but in every subject. If I could have a dozen teachers like you, we'd not have gotten into all this 'Hogwarts High Inquisitor' mess to begin with."

"But that's not something I can do straight out of school; I mean, I can't come back to Hogwarts after I graduate to teach the next year – it'd be ridiculous, even if there was a position for me to take."

"You could be an apprentice until another professor retires or teach at a grammar school until such a position became available. Or you could concentrate on this mess we're all in now and, when the time comes, start working then. The Potters were quite wealthy; money will never be an issue for you."

Blandly, "So I hear."

She seemed to sense the problem then. "Éléonore, you may have never known Lily and James, but they would have wanted you to be happy. James was all about fun – having it, causing it, being at the centre of it – and Lily was the type of person who it was hard to be anything but vibrant around, she was such a live and vivacious person. Even if you choose never to work a day in your life, so long as you're happy, I doubt either of them would have objected. Why do you think I've not made a fuss over you staying in Severus's rooms-?"

I grimaced, "You know about that, huh?" I'd bet my entire vault that he'd told her.

"Yes, Severus told me a few days ago." Damn that weird nobility of his. Won't sleep with me, tells the closest thing I have to a grandmother where I'm sleeping; if he ever does follow my romantic dream, he'll probably risk important body parts to ask Sirius for my hand. Are all Slytherins so strange, or is it just their prince? "Normally, mind, I'd not condone this sort of behaviour from a fellow professor, let alone a student, but there are two things I know that the both of you don't." I raised my eyebrow in a very Snape-ish way (or so I hoped). She gave me one of the smiles she reserved for times like this, when I though she might have actually been happy to say what she was about to say and was looking forward to seeing my reaction to it, "Firstly, you're happy. You cannot lie to me that when you came to Hogwarts five years ago you had the happiest childhood. I told Albus the night he left you with Lily's sister that they were the worst sort of Muggles. But you turned out just fine, and being with Severus makes you happy. You're parents' wouldn't have complained about that, I imagine, not even James, so who am I to judge?" McGonagall paused while I digested this.

My parents would want me to be happy? Even with my fathers' (natural and adoptive) archnemesis? That I supposed I could understand, in a twisted way. McGonagall, my teacher, knew more about my family then I did. All I knew was that Zacharie-Richard, my grandfather Henri-Gabriel "Gabe" Potter's grandfather, had given up the Baronnie de Calais sometime after the revolution in Muggle France and that, while everyone had called him James, my father's name was Jacques-Henri Alexandre Potter. Dad was good on a broom and, while only a Fifth Year, like I am now, became a Stag animagus so that he could help Remus with his werewolf transformations. He loved my mother very much. Mum, Lily Evans, was the Hermione of her generation and spoke perfect French. I had her green eyes and her compassion, or so people told me. Her sister, Petunia, hated me. That was what I knew about my parents. It was more then I'd once known about them, but I still couldn't say if they were religious or not, traditional or nonconformist, morning birds or night owls or testify as to what they'd have wanted me to do with my life. I suppose its every parent's wish their child is happy. But still, it felt nice to hear it from someone who'd actually known them, had watched them grow up and fall in love. It made it more believable, not just some orphaned child's pipe dream.

"Secondly," she continued, "he's happy. I've known Severus for a long, long time. His mother, Eileen Prince, was not an unkind woman – just very disinterested, I would say, in anyone but herself – and, though I never met his father, Tobias, I can only imagine that he was the same. He was a recluse when he was a student, much worse then he is now, and even though he wasn't one of my Gryffindors I always wished I could do something about it. I suppose it was a blessing that both his parents died before he came of age… I think that made it easier, in a way, for him to come back to spy for us… I don't know what you've done to him, nor do I care to know, only that I've actually seen him happy for the first time since Horace told him Tobias was dead. And he's only taken away half as many points from Gryffindor as this time last year."

Ah, the important things in life, I thought dimly, still absorbing. I made Severus happy, and she could see that. That was why she'd not said anything to us that day she'd walked in on us making-out in his classroom. That was why she'd not thrown a fit (at least, not to my knowledge) about me staying in Severus's rooms.

"If you chose to become a professor, not is really required but a NEWT in the subject you intend to teach in. It is, however, recommended to get at least three other NEWTS amongst the core subjects – Potions, Transfiguration, Charms, Herbology, Defence – for your application to truly be considered."

I continued looking at her blankly. I had enjoyed teaching the DA and, indeed, felt a sorrow that I was teaching them to survive a war. That sorrow had now become even more acute since Dumbledore had failed to go peacefully with Fudge but did that mean that I wanted to teach forever, something more then one night a week for a few hours? Something where there'd be homework to assign and grade; classes of every level to teach, Monday through Friday; people calling me Professor? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? That was something I was going to think about.

"I can see," my Head of House continued blithely, in a way that seemed quite annoyingly to indicate she thought she'd already won, "that I won't convince you of your aptitude as a teacher today alone, but you cannot deny that aptitude is there. There are other options, of course; Arietis Cauldwell has mentioned in passing how interested you are in the law," was there like some bizarre magical forum in existence so that various people could talk to each other about me? Tonks, from some source, knew all about the goings on at Hogwarts and teased me mercilessly about all the boys asking me out. Fleur, presumably from the same source or Tonks herself, routinely asked me in her own letters about Severus, queried my motives for liking him, and demanded to know if I'd done anything with my hair yet. Remus, from either the original source, Tonks, or Sirius (who'd become fairly certain during the second term that I'd given up on Severus and was more interested in dating a nice, Gryffindor, Marauder-ish boy like Fred, who in turn entertained me with the 'dating tips' Sirius sent him and called the whole thing the best joke he'd heard in a while), sent his own letters along these bizarre lines, as did Mrs. Weasley, Ari, and, of course, Sirius himself. I was receiving more mail then I'd ever had in my entire life these days, and most of it concerned what other people had been told. Maybe there was just a corkboard somewhere in HQ where everyone posted the letters they'd gotten from me, just so everyone would know what was going on. McGonagall bulled out a pale blue leaflet, the same colour of papers you've been served, and examined it cursorily, "There are no specific requirements for the profession – only five NEWTS, any subject – and the knowledge you'd have a least a three year apprenticeship at a firm before the Ministry would sanction you to practice."

I own 33.7% of Dunn, Hastings, and McGully, so I suppose finding a law firm to apprentice at wouldn't be hard if I so chose. I only know this 'cause I asked Remus, who knows these money things. I also own 6.2% of Nimbus Racing Broom Company, which had been a gift to my father from my grandparents the day he got his OWL results. Strange, I know, but, again, neither here nor there. To my Head of House, I responded, "Oh."

Setting the pamphlet down, "You've really not thought about a career, have you?"

I considered telling her of the years I'd spent in a cupboard-under-the-stairs, my only wish that Family Services would come and take me away or, better yet, I'd wake up and be fourteen or fifteen or sixteen – some age when I'd be old enough to strike out on my own, an unmissed runaway – and be able to end the nightmare I was living. I considered telling her that I'd almost believed all those years that I was worthless and how, if Hagrid hadn't saved me, I don't know what I would have become out there in the wide, uncaring Muggle world where I wasn't "Alexandria Potter, The Girl-Who-Lived," but tomboyish, hidden Harry Potter, whom no one saw and no one cared for. The world is full of enough unheard stories not to need me to repeat what I so easily become to long numb ears. I considered telling her of how, after coming to Hogwarts, I was first too young to dream of the future and, by the time I was old enough, I'd made the foolish mistake of not fighting hard enough, and let Voldemort have my blood so as to rise again. So, no, I'd never thought of a career. Not seriously. "Like I said, I never seriously thought I'd live long enough."

She handed me the tin of Ginger Newts. "Don't be scared, brothersss," Par admonished.

"Look at yourselvesss, crawling all over each other like animalsss!"

"They are animalsss, Acel, like usss."

The Runespoor's left and middle heads turned towards Sus, glared, continued. "You're such a killjoy, Sussss."

"Freedom isss near, brothersss!"

I picked Paracelsus up by the tail and forced, somewhat difficultly, all three heads to look at me. "What are you lot doing?"

"Trying to encourage the tin-dwellersss to escape," sadly enough, Acel was completely innocent when she answered me.

"They are biscuitsss. They do not talk. They do not move. They, most especially, do not escape."

"Why?"

"Because they're made of dough."

"Why?"

"Because they're meant for eating."

"Why?"

"Because humans do not eat actual newtsss, only food shaped like them."

"Why?"

I turned, exasperated, from the Runespoor's heads to look at McGonagall. Paracelsus, who was still dangling upside down in my hand, turned his heads too. "Paracelsus wants to know why your biscuits are shaped like newts."

"I do not know, Miss Potter," she told me, "but if you would ask Miss Granger to meet me here shortly before dinner? I don't Professor Umbridge to catch on to what I'm doing."

I wondered the halls aimlessly, lost in thought. I was almost sixteen, after all. I was living with a man that I had every intention, at least, at this point, staying with for the rest of my life. But what I was going to do with that life, I'd never given it a serious thought.

I sighed, and went to meet up with the twins.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

"I am not explaining to your mother why I allowed the two of you to quit Hogwarts scarcely a month before your NEWTS," I looked at The Twins angrily, unable to yell at them as I'd like because we were, rather oddly, meeting in a broom cupboard on the fourth floor. I continued in what I hope came across as a strident whisper, "I love the idea of your portable swamp, I really do, but our Prank War cannot continue without our bomb-makers."

"You flatter us, peach-"

"-you really do-"

"-but you need us on the outside." Fred finished. Fred, I presumed, because ever since Sirius's whole I-need-someone-to-marry-my-(adoptive)-daughter-right-this-instant scene over Christmas, he'd taken to calling me such annoying nicknames as "peach," "love," and, most annoyingly, "sex kitten." The last-most was reserved only for use in front of teachers.

I smiled at him in the light coming from the small bluebell flame I'd conjured in a bucket at our feet. "Why would I need that? I've got plenty of people on the outside. The DA needs you where you are. What do you need? Alihotsy leaves? Doxy eggs? Boomslang skin? I can get them without you having to go anywhere."

They gave me twin smiles, quickly gave me their list of restricted substances to commit to memory, and placed twin pecks on my cheeks. "Knew we could count on you, my lovely salamander sweetness."

"I'll get it for you – meet me in Myrtle's Bathroom an hour after curfew tonight?"

"Better make it tomorrow night; Fred and I are taking Angelina, Katie, and Alicia out tonight to charm all the suits of armour on DADA corridor."

"Do something like every third suit on the entire first floor instead – they'll be less likely to pin it on one of us then," and, with a nod, they slipped out of the broom closet first.

I counted backwards from a thousand and tried not to shake my head too deeply at their madness. I was almost to three hundred when the cupboard door opened, revealing a Lisa Turpin and Ernie Macmillan who most certainly did not expect to have their cupboard already occupied. "Hello Lisa, Ernie," I said brightly, extinguishing my bluebell, feeling they'd not be needing the light. "Wonderful day isn't it?"

As I walked off, wide smile on my face, I heard Lisa say, "She's loonier then Luna."

"Nah, she's brilliant," Ernie pontificated as I turned the corner. "Bit barmy, yes, but brilliant…"

And, with that, I headed to the kitchens to see if Dobby would sprinkle some wartcap powder in Umbridge's sugar bowl before returning to the place I thought of as home, to charm dangerous potions ingredients out of my – dare I even think it? – beau and, maybe, just maybe, finish my Charms essay before tomorrow. It was a strange life, yes, but I enjoyed it. I had always known, even when I was a child and thought running away was my only option, that I was not destined for a normal life.

Admittedly, I was more then a little mad for undertaking the formation of an underground, Maquis-esque movement, made up almost entirely of students (though Severus did provide me with some restricted and combustible substances to pass along to that Dangerous Duo, The Twins, that otherwise they would have done without and meant that we too would have had to do without a good number of Claxon Crabs, which scuttled around in the shadows and at random intervals released a pre-recorded sound for random durations and had caused the most delightful scene when one had made its way into the Divs classroom and played the cry of the Augury for two hours straight, during which Trelawney had shouted, "Death! Death, my children! It's come for us!" and had resulted in Umbridge, with quite futile effort, attempting to stun the shadows which Flitch cautiously poked his broom handle into every shadowed crevice; and What-Did-You-Say? Gummies, which once ingested, caused everything the eater said to be accompanied by a burst of non-burning fire), with the idea of supplanting the "legally" installed "Headmistress" of Hogwarts, even as far as the normal things in my life went. But too far?

No. Never. This is my life they're messing with. If Alexandrie Moretti and Henri-Gabriel Potter are dead, if Lily and Jacques-Henri Potter then I will build myself a family from what I've been given. And that means my chosen grandfather is Headmaster Dumbledore, and nobody – nobody – is going to break this family up. Even if we weren't a family.

I'm getting melodramatic again. I've really got to stop that. But it's like, look at it from my position. The only blood-family I have is Aunt Petunia and her whale of a son. I don't care if Dumbledore doesn't care about me as anything other then someone who is valuable only because Voldemort wants to kill me, or whatever, all I know is that it seems that he cares about me and that can make him a pseudo-grandfather to me in my book. 'Cause the thing is, no matter how stupid it is, how impractical and implausible and choose-your-own-negative adjective (or maybe its adverb?), I want a family like the Weasleys, where everyone likes each other and they'll gather together for special occasions around the world's largest table and not hex each other into next week.

Maybe that's expecting too much. But I have Sirius now, and Severus, and with the former at least comes a pre-packaged case of pseudo-family – "Cousins" Andi and Tonks, and "Uncle" Remus – that I can springboard off of.

I should have known things were going too well to be true. Things never turn out well. Not for me, not for anyone.

I mean, granted, I did finish my Charms essay, which I had been putting off, albeit unintentionally. I like Charms almost as much as DADA, when we have a competent teacher, and more so when we do not. It's just, last week, when the essay was assigned, I was either "helping" Ron and Hermione on their prefect rounds by convincing Moaning Myrtle to open all the taps (which I accidentally froze into the on position after unintentionally knocking off all the spigots) in her bathroom and aide me in gumming up all the drains on the second floor, or else placing headless hats on all of the statues in the library, or providing Peeves with several cases of Deflagration Deluxe to set off at his leisure. And then, over the weekend, when I wasn't at Quidditch, I was discovering a very enjoyable new type of lie-in, which involved waking to a good snog, the kind that really made me wish the end of term was here already and wonder if I'd brought any of Tonks and Fleur's Christmas presents with me and simply forgotten about them. It was probably a good thing that I wasn't meeting up with The Twins until tomorrow night, or else I'd never get anything done.

It's just, when time was edging its way past curfew and Severus still wasn't back yet, I began to worry. I'd not seen him at dinner, but that wasn't an unusual thing as he sometimes brewed straight through the meal, and when I didn't find him in his laboratory I just took it to mean he was in his office or patrolling the corridors or something. I don't pry, or try not to at least, and give him some space. I mean, I did move in on the guy, start cleaning his apartment at random times, and, hopefully, tempt him on a regular basis into doing something it was against his morals to do. There have to be some limits, however self-imposed: don't try to join him in the shower, don't interrupt his brewing; don't let the Runespoor crawl into his sock drawer. But this was ridiculous. It was unlike him.

Voldemort had to have called him at long last.

That thought alone made my stomach plunge fathoms. I should've done the rest of the homework I'd been neglecting, but once the idea that that rot bustard had my Severus put me on edge. Instantly, all my nerves were aflame with dreadterror that I could only liken to the fear that had overcome me when I realized where I was at the end of the Triwizard Tournament, tied to the gravestone of Voldemort's Muggle father, the one whose existence had been responsible in so many ways for the war that had cost me my parents.

Queen of Light took her bow and then she turned to go.  
The Prince of Peace embraced the gloom and walked the night alone.

It was such a strange thought – a single man, who had perhaps one failing in that he could not accept Magic, could give rise to so much hatred. Could it really be so simple a thing that, if Riddle's father had loved him, had accepted his magic and his mother's magic, that none of this would have happened? That my parents, who had so much more to give the world then me, would never have died, and Neville's parents never would have been driven mad, because there was no Voldemort, just Tom Marvolo Riddle. And if a man could create so much tragedy, could he not have created an equal amount of contentment had things gone differently?

Maybe it was wrong to place so much blame upon one man. After all, even if my parents – brilliant and beautiful Lily Evans and charismatic transfiguration protégé James – had to die, I could have lived from Sirius from the start, or Remus could have taken care of me, or my custodianship could have passed to someone like Ari… Or Azkaban South could have been something other then a hellhole. There were a thousand other possibilities, but this one was the one Fate had chosen?

Why was it my parents' fate to die?

Why is it my fate to suffer and suffer and suffer again? Had I not lost enough for one lifetime? Fought hard enough? Shed enough tears?

Why had fate seen it fit to call Severus away now, when the light was so near now, and happiness was within our sight? Why had that devil I'd set loose upon the world called him back into the fold now? I could struggle through my titanic burden for an age and an eternity more, but only if he was at my side…

Oh, dance in the dark of night, sing to the morning light.

The Dark Lord rides in force tonight and time will tell us all.

My nerves were not designed for sitting at home and waiting for my love to return to me. That was not how I was programmed. But, however much I longed to find whatever meeting place he'd been called to and fight, if necessary, to see him home safely, I forced myself to recognize (with hands that threatened to shake if I did not watch them closely) that I was, however self-taught, still only an almost-sixteen-year-old (and therefore unqualified) witch and in almost all certainty would not be of any help at all against a room full of Death Eaters and their master, all of whom wanted to kill me in an unhealthy way. The only person I could think to go to was Dumbledore, and I'd no idea where he was except that it wasn't here or HQ. Anyway, thanks to dear Marietta's mum at the Ministry's Floo department, I'm pretty sure the only Floo still connected to the outside world is Umbridge's, and even I'm not stupid enough to try to break into there.

So I did the only thing I could do: I cleaned. Cauldrons, floors, cabinets, closets…

Oh, throw down your plow and hoe, rest not to lock your homes.  
Side by side we wait the might of the Darkest of them all.  
I hear the horses' thunder down in the valley blow;  
I'm waiting for the Angels of Avalon, waiting for the eastern glow.

It gave me a lot of time to think, which was painful, but at least keeping my hands busy kept me from eying the clock. I don't know how many hours passed, or how many sponges I went through, only that I failed to turn into a pumpkin at midnight, or, if I did, I was in too much of a worried cleaning frenzy to notice.

Why had Voldemort called Severus now? I was under the impression that, as part of his I'm-going-to-let-the-Ministry-think-I'm-not-back-so-as-to-better-reek-havoc-on-an-unsuspecting-public plan, that Voldemort wasn't calling Severus too often to the meetings. Under Dumbledore's nose, as it were, he didn't want to alert The Order further then necessary. But now, thanks to ungrateful, uncareful little me, Dumbledore was gone and, or so it appeared, The Dark Lord had no qualms about pulling my love away underneath Umbridge's and the MoM's unseeing eyes.

And that could only mean one of two things, and neither one was one I wanted to see, for it either meant that Severus would be a regular feature at the corrupted estbats Voldemort held, or whatever you wanted to call them, and, if so, the risk that his former master would find out that the person he wanted dead above all people, even Dumbledore, was crashing in his pad and for exactly what reasons; or, possibly less wonderfully, whatever "big nasty" Tonks, Fleur, and Ari didn't know about but knew Voldemort was after had either been obtained or a coherent plan to obtain it had been made, which meant "big nasty" on a scale no one, particularly I, was ready to handle. I, after all, as I think at some point I've mentioned, am all of fifteen years old. Granted, I know some post-NEWT level spells – The Patronus Charm; the scutum and praesidis shields; The Awl Charm, which was particularly messy (or so the illustrations suggested) when used on a person – and some out of an old Auror's Handbook sent to me with a box of Easter chocolates – glantius, The Rapid-Shot Spell; detruncare, The Decapitation Curse; The Spear Hex, clavus – but, for the most part, my arsenal contained spells that any Hogwarts graduate could use and counter. Maybe I could utilize them in ways that the normal witch wouldn't think of, and that level of cunning could work in my favour, but the fact remained that Jelly-Legs and cross-species transfiguration does little good against someone set to kill you.

Oh, dance in the dark of night, sing to the morning light.

Paracelsus tried to reassure me that the "dungeon-man" could take care of himself, but I snapped even at him and my Runespoor went to bother Archimedes instead, going on about how this was what his mère got for eating newts-that-weren't-newts-but-dough. A perfect example of why McGonagall is mad for thinking I should teach children: my temper gets the better of me. If I can't hold it back when talking to Paracelsus, for all practical purposes my own son, what does she think I'd do when confronted with classrooms full of eleven- to eighteen-year-olds? Well, perhaps they'd be better behaved then snakes who have a propensity for singing Muggle pop songs when basking in the steam of my hot shower, but children are children…

But it worked out fairly well with the DA, didn't it? I thought them and they learned, not only in DADA, but, apparently, every other subject, and there I didn't have any of the authority that a professor is granted – detentions and demerits, – only what they themselves had granted me. And it had gone so well… That, of course, couldn't be my own doing. All those who gathered had come because they wanted to learn, not because someone demanded that they take my class in order to graduate.

Still, weren't they following my leadership now, when I was in, quote unquote, hiding? Sure, they saw me in class and most meals, Quidditch practice even, but for everything else I stayed hidden. If I had to go to the library, I went early in the morning beneath my cloak. Ditto the tower if I had to see Ron or Hermione, and everything else. I stayed holed away here, in Severus's now immaculate quarters, the map spread out before me as I plotted our next moves. They could have ignored the notes I slipped to them in the halls, or the orders given from Hermione (who received notes from Paracelsus, who enjoyed the "exercise" up to the tower) and who obligingly told her detailed reports to my three-headed snake, who in turned shared them with me. In no way were any of those things binding contracts. Maybe they just wanted to get back at Umbridge for taking over the school, but they were my Maquis and rather then uncoordinated attacks from all angles, the mutant frog had to deal with synchronized attacks from all angles. Nothing could beat two Claxon Crabs set off simultaneously, one in the kitchens (which, of course, Umbridge herself has to deal with because you can't expect the house elves to know how to deal with such problems themselves, now can you?) and the Astronomy Tower (which Umbridge too must deal with, because how is Professor Sinistra to know the proper, MoM approved method for getting rid of one?). Did that mean that I could teach, though?

The apples turn to brown and black; the tyrant's face is red.

Oh the war is common cry, pick up you swords and fly.

It had to at least be three in the morning when I realized I could only make the bed so many times, and that the floor was clean no matter how many more times I chose to scrub it,

Oh Merlin! Oh God! Oh Herne and Hecate! It's wrong of me, isn't it, to panic like this? Severus can take care of himself – that strength is part of the reason I'm drawn to him – and has been doing it for much longer then I've been alive. He will make it back in once piece-

The sky is filled with good and bad that mortals never know.  
Oh, well, the night is long; the beads of time pass slow,  
Tired eyes on the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow.

Unless they kill him. I cannot help but think names are fate, in a way. I've read Antigone; I know the story behind the Eteocles, which his crazed parents gave him as his middle name… He was Oedipus's son, the son and grandson of Jocasta. He and his brother, Polyneices, fought over the Theban throne. Both died. And don't even get me started on all the Severus's in Roman history who died tragic ends…

Oh Merlin! Oh God! Why were strange songs coursing through my head when all my thoughts should be focused on Severus, who might even now be dead in a meeting place somewhere, tortured to death for loving me…? Too much time spent with my mad Runespoor, that was certain…

The pain of war cannot exceed the woe of aftermath.  
The drums will shake the castle wall; the ringwraiths ride in black, ride on.

I was on the verge of starting on the storage rooms, wherein who knew what strange and lurking dangers awaited me, when I started at a noise behind me.

It was not his usual whisper of cloth, but I could forgive him easily for scaring me when I saw him. His black robes were slashed and torn, bleeding in many places I noticed as he stumbled out of the floo.

"Good God, Severus," I whispered, rushing over to him but, out of concern for his wounds, stopping just short of touching him, though I longed for nothing more then to take him up into my arms and assure myself that he was alive and well. "What did they do to you?"

I'm not sure he heard me – on anyone else I'd call the strange, almost otherworldly daze he'd fallen into one of drink or similar – but I lead him to the couch anyway, murmuring over again in endless repetition, "What did they do? What did they do?" in a way that begs no answer, only that he say something, anything to me indicating he's hearing me. He lay down willingly, too easily, and it caused me more worry than if he'd brought his arm home separate from the rest of him. Severus has always been this, sturdy, stable force; for him to become so pliable now, it broke me almost as the waiting had. "Rest now," I said too weakly, tears in my voice if not my eyes, not caring that I was dirty from cleaning and he stained from his "visit" to Voldemort as I made sure he was comfortable on the couch I'd cleaned not hours earlier. "Oh honey, oh sweetheart," I cried, repeating it with my, "What did they do to you?" mantra.

However shocked I was, must say I did more than just sit there uselessly. No, I conjured a bowl of water and a rag and, removing his torn clothes, began to clean the wounds. None were deep, but the kind a coutea, a lesser culteris, would leave. The kind intended for slow torture rather then a quick death. I sobbed harder, unable to hide it, and leaned down to kiss his lips, his jaw, his chest before continuing. Whatever they did to him, I knew, was because of me. They found out about me…

There was a deep cut above his chest; thinner, longer ones elsewhere. If they had found out, he'd escaped before they'd gotten to release too much of their anger on him. Fumbling with my wand, I murmured a quick-and-dirty healing spell that can't have been all too much fun for him to endure, but got the job done. "Oh, Severus, what happened to you? And why didn't you go to Madam Pomprey?"

"If I'd of known you'd fuss over me like this, I would've," he coughed. I could have cried for joy if I hadn't been in tears already, but it was enough that he at least was conscious enough to answer me.

Sing as you raise your bow, shoot straighter than before.  
No comfort has the fire at night that lights the face so cold.

"You bastard," I said, even as I leaned down to bury my face in his chest, "why did you have to go? You had to have known this would have happened." I kissed his chest, his jaw, his mouth with great and overwhelming desire, "Never go back there," I said between kisses, "never, you hear me? We've not come this far for me just to let you die on me."

"Die?" he said gruffly, tiredly, "Éléonore, this is nothing-"

"Bleeding is not nothing!" I insisted. "I can't let them do this to you because of me!" But it soon turned out this wasn't because of me – just normal Voldemort unhappiness for Severus not bringing him any good information on Dumbledore. The Dark Lord – yet – did not know about us.

Oh dance in the dark of night, sing to the morning light.  
The magic runes are writ in gold to bring the Balance back, bring it back.

And it was then, as we lay together on the couch, him to exhausted and in pain to sleep, and me still too afraid for him to sleep or do more then hold him through the long hours 'til daylight, that I realized just what it meant, loving a spy in wartime…

But what could I do? It wasn't like I could stop loving him, no matter how much Sirius might have wanted me to. I had willingly chosen to twine my life about his, and I couldn't end that now, not now, not when I loved his kisses too dearly and the way it felt when he held me close and how I could light something in his eyes no one else had ever lit.

I worried. The next whole month leading up to OWLS I worried. I worried that Severus would get himself killed before we ever had a chance to be happy, I worried that Voldemort had found a way to the "big nasty" Tonks had spoken of long ago, I worried about Dumbledore and the Order and everyone in it; I worried about everything but the examinations that caught me by surprise the second week of June.

The OWLS were my future, right? Without the requisite grade in them there was no hope for the NEWTS that I needed, whatever they might be. I should have studied for them, as Hermione would have me if I was still in the tower, but despite the fact that the idea I could be a professor like Severus and teach one day here with him was a delightful one, the fact still remained that Voldemort was out there. He wanted to kill me. He could get into my mind, and I could not keep him out. If he'd sent me a vision, however unwillingly, of Nagini attacking Mr. Weasley, then what was to say that the next vision I had wouldn't be of him killing Severus or Sirius or Remus or Tonks or Fleur?

Severus, I think, admired the way I threw myself into the dusty old books, even if it did cause him to worry a bit when I didn't mind the dust getting over the places I'd have cleaned the night before. I don't think he cared about the OWLS either, except so far that it was necessary I take them. I read on all the was wizards had created to block their mind from outside influences – talismans of enormous worth and power, medicinal tattoos that imbued the magical power of said talisman into the skin so it could never be forcibly removed, bondings and dedications to heroes and deities who might protect them, wardings placed around the mind; Occulmency, of course – and yet none of them seemed tailored to work on something interior, whereas all the things that seemed to exist to ward against voices and sights that no one else could see seemed designed for the insane, those whose delusions were nothing more than that – delusions.

There had to be something I could create, or clabber together, or use off-label to block exterior influences that acted interiorly, but I didn't know what it might be. There was only so much that I could do – I was no great mage who could play around with minds, nor was I in the position to want mine to be played around with – and it depressed me. Even my work with the Hogwarts Maquis didn't seem as enjoyable when I was faced for the first time with the knowledge that I'd always be connected to Voldemort until one or the other of us finally bowed to the other's wishes and died already.

I think I had some strange idea that, if I could protect myself, it'd make Severus safe too.

But that did not stop the rest of the world from turning. OWLS came and went – Charms, Transfiguration, Herbology, DADA the first week; the liberating Potions, CoMC, Astronomy, Divs, and HoM the next – and Hannah Abbot had her yearly nervous breakdown. I showed my Patronus off to the examiners, who were so thrilled by my knowledge of spells they might have kissed me if Umbridge hadn't been boring holes through them with her eyes.

Astronomy saw Hagrid run off the grounds and McGonagall so injured they had to send her to St. Mungos.

I was in my final exam – that final blessed exam – when the dream came. I'd scribbled some answers on my exam, not caring what I got in HoM, and scratched in the margins ideas I was mulling over about protecting my mind from Voldemort. I had some silly idea that if I could find a way to place the warding one would use on the mentally ill not on metal bands but metallic inks, combining it with the talismans-of-the-flesh used indigenously as a sort of doorway that allowed only good spirits to pass into the mind, that the unwanted visions might be prevented and, even if they weren't, I'd still have a wicked looking tattoo… I closed my eyes, feeling fuzzy warm in the golden light that was filtering into the Great Hall… I'd not slept properly in days, I was so worried, and I knew that, just as soon as I figured out how to protect myself I'd crash completely… But I could just see the form my talisman would take, right on the horizon… I was in a fuzzy warm, golden-lit dell, empty of anything but radiantly green grass for several yards before the black, dark forest swallowed everything… but in the small hollow I was safe; I could feel the warm presence of something, someone protecting me from the more sinister red eyes beyond… It was the feeling like I got from Severus, so warm and strong and understanding, so knowledgeable of the every-weaving roads through the Dark and able to guide me through…

… It was black as the Darkness it was born of, sleek and strong in a subtle way, with golden eyes that knew the unknowable… A cat? I thought but did not know. It was too large for something domestic…

Then the scene changed, and I was suddenly transplanted out of the warm glade and into the cold, damp hallway from my dreams. I walked, as I always did, purposefully down the hall and through the other, strange rooms filled with Dali clocks and floating planets, until I reached the church of the glowing orbs. I could see the numbers on the shelves clearly this time… ninety, ninety-one… and I was still far from the centre of the labyrinth, nothing but a spectral Minotaur in its depths… I turned at ninety-seven and saw the wounded, black mass huddled there.

A thrill of inhuman excitement and more human dread filled me, and from my own, lipless mouth that empty voice that had haunted me in childhood nightmares emerged, "Take it for me… Lift it down, now… I cannot touch it… but you can…"

When the huddled mass did nothing more than twitch, it was my own, long, white fingers clutching the long, dark-wooded wand that crucio-ed it. I laughed as I listened to his screams of pain, which I knew too well, for I'd felt that pain too…

"Lord Voldemort is waiting…" I told the mass when I finally lifted the curse. I fought to end the connection between my mind and his, but I had to know who it was, to save them. I was too curious… curiosity killed the cat, you know…

It was Sirius, bloodstained and near broken from the pain, that answered me. "You'll have to kill me."

"Undoubtedly I shall in the end. But you will fetch it for me first, Black… You think you have felt pain thus far? Think again… We have hours ahead of us and nobody to hear you scream… Besides, my meeting with your daughter ended so abruptly last summer. There were so many things I wanted to show her… You will, I suppose, just have to do…"

I was screaming when my eyes, at last, snapped open. The instant I awoke, I swallowed my yells with long-practiced completeness, leaving the Hall as I ran full tilt from it in a stunned, empty silence.

I had to save Sirius.


	17. In Which I Learn the Meaning of War

I ran out of the Great Hall and, quickly taking stock of all my options, I decided I didn't care if I burst in on Severus's class and began with lightening speed to head towards the dungeons.

Perhaps the Maquis had been too successful or had too oft used The Twins' wonderful Claxon Crabs, or maybe there was some other reason besides the frog was out to ruin my life, but I hadn't so much as gotten halfway down the main hall before she appeared coming out from a door on the other side of it.

"Miss Potter!" she said, her tone one of scalded honey, "What is all this screaming about? Why aren't you in your OWLS?" She stood like a fat clay soldier in the doorway, one I'd have ignored if I didn't need to go past her. But I did and wasn't going to risk her jinxing me when my back was turned.

So I did the only thing I could think to do: I pulled my wand from the sheath I'd fitted on my arm and, with a spell I'd made Severus teach me in case something ever happened to him or me (the night of Voldemort's return, for instance, the thought alone sending a shiver down my spine that I refused to recognize so instead pushed its energy into the steal resolve that has forming in me) and one of us needed rescuing or something (oh, why hadn't I passed that knowledge along to Sirius? He could use it now. How had the Death Eaters gotten him? Had HQ been discovered? Was Remus, who was also staying there, hurt or taken or killed? What of the rest of my created family, always in and out, and The Order members who might be delivering messages there? Who else was being tortured because of me? What others had been forced to lay down their lives because I had failed to kill the bastard so long ago….?), and cast with a swift wave, "Nuntius," and poured my message into the silvery stream of thought that flew in the direction of the dungeons. "Vision of Sirius being tortured for the weapon by Voldemort. Umbridge trying to stop me by Great Hall. Help," and hoped to all that was holy and half of all that wasn't that it worked.

"What in Merlin's name are you doing? Off to set another niffler in my office? Set more explosives in the second floor toilets? Or were you merely off to report to Dumbledore about the damage you've caused the school this week – do you have any idea how much it will cost to-"

I had only one choice, and that was to hope that Severus had gotten my Message Spell – they should teach nuntius to all students; would make situations like the one I got into last June easier to stop – and there were no other Order members left in Hogwarts that I could wish might happen by to stop this all. If it was a fight she wanted, she'd get it – because every moment I wasted dancing around this issue was another crucio Sirius, my father, was held under. It was too long in coming. Vit la révolution! Avancent Maquisard!

"I swear, Professor," I hissed as snakelike as possible, "if you don't get out of this instant, you'll rue the day you ever stepped foot in it." Rue? Rue? Merlin, I'd been reading too many of Severus's old books.

Dumbly – well, I thought dumbly; there was a bit of rage in her voice, and more then a little infuriated, which I suppose I could understand – "Is that a threat?"

"Yes, Undersecretary Umbridge, it is."

"Very well," she said, with the sense of one who'd been looking forward to this for a long time, "You've been a menace to this school from the start, with your filthy little lies about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named returning. I should have done this at the beginning, when you failed to come to my classes, where I could try to instil some proper learning in you… Very well, I am left with no alternative… This is more than a matter of school discipline… This is an issue of Ministry security… Yes… yes…" She appeared more than a little nervous as she spoke, hand clutching her oddly stubby wand. This in turn made me nervous. The Great Hall was not too far away that a yell could not be heard and Severus had to be coming soon, but there were spells that could quiet screams or else so quick that I'd not have the chance to shout out. Not that I thought Umbridge actually knew any of those. But those who believed in something, like the MoM, were dangerous. "You are forcing me, Miss Potter… I do not want to, but sometimes circumstances justify the use… I am sure the Minister will understand that I had no choice…" But, while her words were stilted, she appeared to actually enjoy the thought she was contemplating so loudly in the front hall. "Somebody's got to take charge here, put things back in order. Order is safe! Order is good! The chaos you spread will be the end of the Ministry as we know it!"

"Maybe that's a good thing!" I said, a little more loudly then necessary, counting by heartbeats how long since I'd woken from my dream and trying to calculate how long it would take to get to London. "What good is it doing now? All the bribes in the world can't hide the fact that Voldemort is back forever! Maybe the Ministry needs to fall-"

"Oh, and I suppose you plan to replace it with Dumbledore – or yourself? Being an attention seeking whore not enough for you? That's what you want, isn't it, Harry Potter? You want Cornelius Fudge replaced by Albus Dumbledore. You think you'll be where I am, don't you?"

"You're barking mad!" Nobody on Merlin's green earth – with the exception of Percy – would ever say they wanted to be a Senior Undersecretary when they grew up.

"Is that you're plan? Tell me!"

"By their own follies they perished, the fools." I'd read too much Homer in that cupboard-under-the-stairs. Where was Severus? We had to get out of here.

"You leave me no choice, Harry Potter. The Cruciatus Curse ought to loosen your tongue."

I blinked once at her then, realizing, yes, she was completely barking mad, I stunned her before she could aim her wand. "That," I spat at her, "is why you don't taunt your victims, you bloody frog." Now, of course, came the question of what to do with her stunned form. I conjured ropes around her, locomotor-ed her into the nearest broom closet, set disillusionment and silencing charms around her, and locked the door. Hey, a little bit of paranoia never hurt anybody. "And the name is Éléonore."

And now to save Sirius.

Luckily, I didn't have to go much further down the hall before Severus arrived. "Where is she?" he asked, his tone belaying worry to those who could read its slight changes.

"I hit her with a stunner when she tried to crucio me – but that's no matter now. I had another vision in the History of Magick OWL. I was resting my eyes, thinking of some way to keep the visions out, you know, when suddenly I'm drawn into one. Just like my dreams – the long hall to the Department of Mysteries, and then the hall of glowing orbs. He's got Sirius there, wants him for something, and I know you don't like him much, but he's my father and Voldemort's torturing him there and we've got to stop it." His dark, night-black eyes met my emerald ones. I did not know if he was looking into my thoughts or trying to read something else in their depths, but I stared unblinkingly back at him. "I don't know how much time we have, Severus!"

With a resolved sigh, as if he'd suspected something like this would happen before long. "If the Dark Lord's there, the two of us alone aren't going to make any difference." I smiled at him and could not help but throw my arms around him. This was why I loved him – he wasn't going to try to talk me out of it, or leave me here to worry over them both – "I think a trip to Grimmauld Place is in order."

"If there's anything left of it," I added darkly.

Conceding, "If there's anything left." Maybe he thought it was more likely Sirius was attacked about town, which he could freely go about in now that he was innocent, I dunno. Or maybe he was just outraged that Umbridge would try to use an illegal curse on me. I was outraged myself – but that could be dealt with as soon as Sirius was safe. I am not going to have another father die on me, by all the gods above and all the demons below.

I released him and, feeling relieved to be doing anything at all, began to march back towards the main entrance.

From the great hall then the exodus began as my classmates, finished with their OWLS (which suddenly seemed to me ages away and unreal. Childhood, school – what were these things when compared to the realities of life and death? I was at the centre of a war, the eye of a storm around which nothing was good or safe or happy, and wherein everything I loved would hurt at the end of Voldemort's wand. OWLS? That was one future. But was there not another where I could be happy, or as close to happy as I was allowed? As a solider – the very heroine I'd disavowed? Soldiers did not need grades. The only test of their skills was that they lived and their enemies did not) and streamed out to the freedom the next week would allow them.

"Harry! Harry!" I heard Ron and Hermione call as Severus and I walked quickly through the hall and out the door. They jogged to keep up. "Harry," Hermione continued, "what's the-"

"Voldemort's got Sirius in The Department of Mysteries." I barely paused to reflect on how much I hated that name. All because some stupid computer had printed the nonsense "Henriet Potter." Harry sounded so ridiculous on a girl. That computer must die.

"What?"

"How?"

"I dunno," I said, walking faster still. I could feel them looking wearily at Severus, who was clasping my elbow and appeared, in a way, to be pulled along by it, even as he increased his own pace to keep up with me until we could make it to the edge of the anti-apparition wards. "All I know is, if Death East- I mean, Death Eaters could break into HQ and the Ministry in broad daylight, there's something serious going on that we don't know about. We're going to find out more. You two, tell the other professor's what's happening." I was nearly at a jog now myself, images of human travesty clouding all more sensible thoughts from my mind… We'd enter HQ and see the main hall, so bright and crimson red, seemingly untouched. A breath of ease would come over me as the fear lessened somewhat. My eyes would catch then on the glass of picture frames and framed newspaper headlines what the walls could not show – the drying red stains that could only be one thing. I'd push open the door to the front room, where the floo was, and see the first tumble of bodies, these Order members I didn't know, some of them untouched in death, others torn asunder, bodily fluids staining the still-new carpeting Andi had laid down… I shook my head to rid the thought before my mind created the scene below, in that wonderful, warm kitchen that was as much Mrs. Weasley's as the Burrow, where all my dear second family would be, still and perfect in death like Mum and Dad. Like Cedric… "He might try an attack on the school while the Ministry's in chaos and Dumbledore's gone. Oh, and Umbridge is in one of the first floor broom closets, I don't remember which."

Paracelsus, who'd been in my pocket this whole time and only now saw fit to grace me with his presence, "The one in which the."

"Lion-who-caresss-for-plantsss and the panicky-she-badger."

"Were pair-bonding in last week."

I shared that titbit with them. "Paracelsus says it's the one that Neville and Hannah Abbot were snogging in last week." I don't think it helped any, but they could always ask one or the other which one it was if they wanted to brick it in. "How do you know such thingsss?" He quickly explained to me that he was a grown-up Runespoor and old enough to do things on his own. I doubted this, but was in no mood to argue.

Meanwhile, "Neville and Hannah Abbot? The same Hannah Abbot who covered half the Great Hall in flamingos last Tuesday?"

"Get with the program," Hermione scolded them as we jogged along, about halfway down the walk to Hogsmeade. "They've been seeing each other on and off since the Yule Ball."

"She's such a flake though."

"Hannah's quite-"

"Is this really the best time to be taking about this?" I interrupted. Under his breath, Severus concurred, though probably for different reasons. He never had liked Neville, and things had only gotten worse have Neville had melted his sixth cauldron… "Will you do this for me?"

Hermione began to slow down… "Sure, Harry."

"Yeah." They fell back moving, presumably, to gather the professors remaining at Hogwarts – Sprout, Flitwick, Sinistra, and a few others I'd not had – and the Maquis to defend the school if necessary. We'd have to send some of the Order – if any survived – to bolster the guard.

The gates at last appeared, the old-fashioned, iron letters spelling out "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry" in large, almost illegible letters while below, the words "Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus," rested. I wondered then if the Founders had ever meant for their school to be a hotbed of rebellion, a bastion of war. Somehow I could only doubt it. I had never felt more like a solider, a warrior, a heroine, though I was filled with fear. I had no golden armour, just my wand and my lover at my side, but I'd the choice here. It wasn't like First Year, when there was no one who could save the Stone from Quirrel. Nor was it like Second Year, where I was the only Parsel Mouth who could save Ginny from Riddle's diary. It wasn't Third Year either, when I was tasked to save Sirius by Dumbledore, or Fourth when I'd no choice but to fight Voldemort or die. I could have let Severus go alone. I could have, I should have, but I've never shied away from a fight and I'm not about to start now, not when it's my father I've got to save, who's only in danger because of me. As the gates drew nearer and nearer, I couldn't help but feel that, by passing through them, I was giving up whatever remained of my childhood entirely to this war.

I did not think about it. If I did not fight, Sirius would die. We left the grounds and, grabbing on tightly to each other, appearated to HQ.

)()()()()()()()()()()()()()(

It was silent when they entered number twelve, Grimmauld Place. The front hall was not altered as in my dream – no blood spatter on the walls – although the wall opposite the stairs sported a few more photos then it had over Christmas. A photo, taken at the Yule Ball, of Hermione, Ron, Neville, and me. Tonks, at her Auror Academy graduation, her robes flashing red, yellow, and green. One of the entire Weasley clan, plus the Tonks's, Cauldwell's, Hermione, and we two Blacks from New Years. There was a tingling feeling coming from the wall, like a foot asleep; Bill's wards, I thought.

I did not like silent houses. They reminded me too much of Azkaban South, devoid of music or happiness. As uncomfortable as I could get surrounded by all the noise and people of Hogwarts, it was alive. Andi had made great strides in warming up the house, taking away the Dark and allowing the living to set roots in HQ, but now it was so cold again… Images flashed in my mind, alternating between the bloodied corridor I envisioned and the hallway where Hermione and I had hung Christmas decorations.

Severus took the lead as we made our way to the kitchen. He, after all, was the one who knew what he was doing. I was just a little school girl playing solider. He was the spy and had been doing this for longer then I'd been alive. I clenched my wand so tight I'm surprised it didn't break and, trying to keep an eye on both him and the hall behind us at the same time.

There were quiet noises coming from the kitchen. He looked back at me and nodded at me with a very small, very quick movement of his head and raised his wand. I knew, somehow, what he meant. I was the support mage here – if things got messy, throw up a praesidis around the both of us and work to keep things from hitting us. He knew the uglier spells of war – let him deal with it if it came to that.

With a silent spell, he kicked the door open-

Only to find Tonks and Remus within the kitchen, Tonks mopping up the cup of tea she'd just knocked over. "Wotcher Éléonore," she said, catching sight of me, "Snape," she added, somewhat less comfortably. She set down the rag she'd been using and, bringing up her other arm, tapped on her watch-face. "Is it the hols already?"

I sprang out from behind Severus, taking in the room – painted pale yellow, warm, and hung with herbs and pans near the over-large oven. A wide fireplace sat opposite, behind the head of the scrubbed-oak table, and, despite of the growing June heat, a fire was lit within. It took me a moment to realize that it gave off no warmth, was there for floo communication purposes only, and imagined easily that, if need be, at least three conversations could be going on at once in the hearth. In a frame, where a painting of the cliffs of Dover had dominated one wall during my Christmas stay, a map of Britain hung, scattered over with multi-coloured tacks. Though he was sitting, it appeared Remus's shirt was un-tucked and belt unbuckled. Tonks, despite mopping up the tea she'd evidentially spilled right before our entrance, was in a similar state, with the addition of having her jeans unbuttoned.

Sirius was not in the room. I jumped back out of the room and ran up the stairs to Sirius's room. HQ wasn't ransacked. Remus and Tonks were still alive. My scar burned like it was on fire.

Remus and Tonks would be freaking out, not making out, if Sirius was missing. There would be panicked calls coming in the over-large hearth if the Ministry had been invaded. Which meant either that there was no one in the MoM left who might be able to warn the Order – a distinct, albeit unlikely, possibility – or that the MoM had never been attacked at all…

Meaning that Sirius wasn't being tortured there…

Which meant that he was safe…

Which mean that Voldemort was playing with my mind and something very, very bad was surely about to happen.

I ran up the two flights of stairs to Sirius's room, pushed open the door without knocking, saw him lying on his back on his bed, drawing the outline of something that made no sense from this angle with his wand, while Ari sat at the round table in the room, papers spread out before her, clearly trying to explain something important to him. Quickly ascertaining that both were well, I gave them a quick smile and said, "Good, you're not dead," to the both of them and ran back to the kitchen.

Severus was, quite clearly, trying to explain why we were there when I returned.

"Sirius is upstairs, not dying," I told the Potions Master, on the verge of panic now. "Voldemort – he's getting into my head and making me see things now – I don't care if we've found nothing certain to work yet, we've just got to try them all and hope something works."

"We don't know that for certain, Éléonore," he tried to calm me. "And, if he is, we still do not know how the magics might interact."

I wouldn't have it. "Next thing you know, it might be you I see tortured, and what's to stop me then from falling into his trap – who knows what's really at the Department of Mysteries, waiting for me?"

"He's sent people after the weapon." Tonks asked without asking, then walked to the floo – ostensibly to rally the troops, or so I supposed. Remus tried to mediate the conversations and failed entirely, and so, resignedly, walked over to the be-pinned map and tapped it twice with his wand until the white cliffs of Dover appeared again. Matthew Arnold said it best of them: the world which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new, hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; and we are here as on a darkling plain swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night. What I would not give to believe in that dreamland, where the only thing that matter was that in a week's time I'd no longer be Severus's student and thus he'd be – morally – free to do whatever we pleased with me!

"We've just got to-"

"Hold on," said Sirius, who'd walked into the kitchen now, very curious, or so I'd imagine, about what I was doing here and why I was unusually glad he wasn't dead. "What's going on here?"

I started pacing. Severus, kindly, explained. "Éléonore had a vision during her OWL of you being tortured by the Dark Lord. We came here to deduce if it was a real vision or not. Obviously, you are unharmed, and so we can only imagine it was a trap."

Maybe it was the strain of the OWLS I'd not cared to prepare for, or the fear-fuelled obsession that the next time somebody went off to battle in this war, someone I loved would die. Or maybe it was the fact that, despite it all, I'm only fifteen, sixteen in a month. I don't know, but my panic blurred on the edge of hysteria. "He's just going to keep coming after me and after me and after me until one of us is dead!" I whispered to myself, as if suddenly realizing the truth of it. And, in many ways, the truth of it suddenly became real to me. The idea that Voldemort wanted to kill me was not new to me, but the incessant nature of it all hit a nerve that had already taken too much this month. "And, if he can't get to me, he'll come after everyone I love…" It was with a fanatical fury I spoke next. "We've got to stop him! Him or his Death Eaters, or whoever he's sent to that room of glowing orbs. There's something there he wants – that weapon of his is on row ninety-seven, and, if he gets it, there'll be no stopping him, whatever it is! Once he has it, one by one by one everyone will die, like Mum and Dad and Cedric, until, at last, he finally has what he wants!"

"Éléonore-" one of the men said. I did not catch who, nor did I care.

"Maybe someone should get a calming potion-" said another.

"Calm!" I cried. "I am calm! Is it so un-calm to want to be happy? Well, happiness never favoured the timid, and if that means that I've got to seize something by the horns that oughtn't to be seized, so be it! If he's going to come after me, I say we go after him first!"

"Éléonore-" one of them said again.

Severus spoke up then. I'd know his voice anywhere, talking me down from my cliff's-edge most especially. "Are you certain about this?"

I nodded emphatically, staring not at him but the painting of Dover Beach. He was from Kent, Severus. Dover was in Kent. I wondered if he'd ever been to those pale, ethereal cliffs that stood across the straight from Calais… I'd never seen those cliffs, not that I could recall, or that city, or so much of the world. Voldemort was wrong to try to take it from me, this world I had not seen nor tasted nor touched nor loved in enough. How many other girls had he cost families and futures? How many other armies had fought men like him throughout the ages of the world?

"You're going to go anyway – to the place where you thought Sirius was being tortured. You're going to spring the trap." Ari, ever the quick one, realized.

We were a room full of three Gryffindors, a Slytherin spy, a Metamorphmagus full of joie de vivre, and a lawyer. No one could have talked us out of the idea. I, after all, was too fond of living to want to live in fear – I had to take something from Voldemort, something he needed, be it a Death Eater or the weapon or whatever else, if he held anything dear at all; so what if I was fifteen. Sirius wanted to protect me and was, as before Azkaban, ever eager for a fight against the Dark. Remus too had failed to move on since Mum and Dad died almost fifteen years ago, and that young Remus would do whatever Dad or Sirius asked – and he too was too Gryffindor to back down. Severus knew what bombs would drop if I failed to show up at Voldemort's trap and that the best way to protect me was, for the moment, to put me in harm's way. Tonks was addicted to danger the way others are to cheap romance novels or soap operas, and she was nothing if not loyal to the family and the cause. Ari knew from her years of practicing law that the best way to get what you needed was when the other side thought it was getting the better deal.

The six of us appearated to the Ministry, to meet up with those Tonks had flooed and give Voldemort the surprise of his life.

)()()()()()()()()()()()()()(

"Ninety-seven!" whispered Tonks in Hermione's form. Apart from the two of us, the cathedral appeared empty of any other human life. Only the glowing of the orbs was alive down here, and it felt traitorous even to enter. As we gazed down the row, which appeared empty, my mouth suddenly went dry. I knew that Sirius wasn't down there – that he'd been safe at HQ the whole time, but I'd expected to encounter at least something to fight against. But there'd been nothing throughout the whole MoM – nothing and no one in the Atrium, in the elevator, or the DoM as Hermione-Tonks and I made our way to this point.

We weren't alone. I knew that much. Sirius, the actual Sirius, was around here somewhere, beneath a camouflage charm, as were Severus and Remus and Ari. I would have preferred to see them or the people I was still over-eager to attack, to fight my way to this point or see shadows of their passing in broken delicacies or strewn bodies. Shadows made me jumpy, made me think of a summer night just a year earlier dark without stars or moon. Maybe Wormtail would show tonight, to be properly killed or captured at last, or the demon he'd helped to revive… "They should be near here," I whispered back at her, swallowing deeply, "Anywhere here…. Right about here."

Of course, though, there was nobody there at all. If Severus hadn't taken me to HQ first, if I hadn't already known Sirius was safe, I'd be blind with panic now. We made our way slowly down the narrow space between high shelves, eyes darting every which way in attempt to catch some glimpse, some evidence proving that it wasn't a bizarre dream induced by too much fear and too many OWLS. "Hey, Éléonore," she said suddenly, grabbing my arm and pointing towards something on a shelf about three quarters of the way. She was, like the real-life Hermione, half a head taller then me, and had more easily seen the yellow and curling label affixed to a shelf beneath one of the brighter, though equally dust-covered, glowing orbs, "It's got your name on it." Hermione-Tonks sounded more freaked-out then I'd ever heard Hermione or Tonks outside these strange halls. "What's your name doing down here?"

I was blinking slowly at the label still, trying to make sense of it.

1 November, 1980

S.P.T. to A.P.W.B.D.

Dark Lord & (?) Alexandrie-Margaux Potter

it read. My actual name. Not Alexandria or Margaret Lenore or Harry as everyone called me, but my actual, birth-given name, on a sheet of paper dated two years before I'd destroyed Voldemort the first time. I suppose one could say I was given such an unusual name for a British girl because of the writing on this paper, but what was the likelihood that my father, who worked as a member of the Muggle-Worth Excuse Committee before he went into hiding, or my beloved mother, a mind healer-in-training, had been in this secret, inexplicably large cavern of orbs, on this particular row sometime before their deaths? My paternal grandmother had been named Alexandrie and Mum's middle name was Margret; could someone have correctly guessed that I'd be named after two generations of Potter wives? But it would have been impossible, even with magic, for my mother to have known she was pregnant in November of 1980…

I felt an inexplicable pull towards the object. Fleur's words from the previous summer jumped to the forefront of my thoughts: "'E is after something dangerous, something worse and more powerful zen 'e 'ad before." Something nastily bad. And, if I'd learned one thing about magic in my five years in the wizarding world, it was that things were not always as they appeared. I didn't know what this glowing orb might be other then a glowing orb in a cathedral full of glowing orbs, but it was a weapon infinitely more dangerous then a handful of glass should be, that was certain. Reaching out my hand, I clasped the orb in my hand, surprised at its warmth. If I expected claxons and sirens, I was wrong.

It was Lucius Malfoy's silky voice I heard instead, drawling, "Very good, Potter. Now turn around, nice and slowly, and give that to me."

And so we did, my wand already in my other hand two in Hermione-Tonks's. At least six wands were trained at each my and Tonks's hearts. I prayed to the unknown deities that Severus, Sirius, and the others would be in place soon, but kept a praesidis on my tongue. Tonks was an Auror, trained and capable, in ways I was not – yet. She also looked like Hermione, a book-worm, and they'd not expect trouble from that quarter. Me they wanted, me they'd look to. "Lucius, you don't write, never call – is this really the proper way to welcome your wife's newest cousin into the family?"

A voice – female, but an absurd parody of one, raspy and somewhat empty, like a ghost's, but prideful and rancorous – spoke from next to Malfoy Sr. "Family? You'll never be family, you half-blood bitch."

Tonks's hands tightened on the twin wands she carried, eyes narrowing imperceptibly at the sound of her aunt's voice, but in no other way gave away that she was Andi's daughter – this Death Eater's own half-blood niece – rather then the child of Muggle dentists. With a grim smile, "And Cousin Trixie! Why, isn't this a right old family gathering. Are Cissy and Draco here as well?"

Bellatrix Lestrange let out a short, guttural burst of laughter. "You hear her? You hear her? I think little girl wants to die today."

Her brother-in-law restrained her with is soft, shifty voice, "Oh, you don't know Potter as I do, Bellatrix. She has a great weakness for heroics; the Dark Lord understands this about her. Not give me the prophesy, Potter."

Death Eaters wanted the orb – a prophesy, apparently, like the fool Trelawney had made my Third Year. I, in my contrary nature, knew I had to keep it from them, even if it meant destroying it. Still, I slipped it into the pocket where Paracelsus had, surprisingly, curled up in the elevator after saying human battles were boring. "Sirius already here? I know you've stashed him away somewhere. I'd really like to see him, y'know; missed him over the Easter Hols 'cause of OWLS. Draco wasn't looking too pleased after we came out of our Defence written, I might add. Probably should have studied harder – but don't tell him I told you; I think he wants to bribe the examiners himself, y'know, prove that he can take after daddy in the family business."

Malfoy Sr. snorted. "It's time you learned a lesson in manners, Potter. Now give me the prophecy, or we start using wands."

"Oh, go ahead – I thought you hated doing things the Muggle way," I laughed, a nervous edge I couldn't hide within it. Maybe "Cousin Trixie" was right – I did have a death wish. I could have, after all, stayed at Hogwarts. I could have stayed at HQ, or let Tonks pretend to be me and go alone, while I stayed safely shadowed with Severus until we could attack. "I'd just like to point out to you that, you do curse me, your precious little prophesy goes bye-bye. They ought to make the things a little-"

"Accio Proph-" my dear cousin tried and I, feeling movement in my pocket, caught not a second later the speeding object by the speeding object by its tail.

"Seeker," I told them, examining the tiger-striped Runespoor I now dangled upside down in my hand. Acel's head was looking a little… bulgier… then usual, "youngest in a century." I turned a quarter of my attention on Paracelsus, trusting Tonks beside me and the Order members hidden somewhere nearby – or so I hoped – could protect me. "You do realize, Acel," I hissed (a fact which, I'm pleased to note, caused several of the Death Eaters to start, though it wasn't exactly a secret I shared this particular skill of their master's), "that that wasss glasssss." I looked back up, intentionally addressing Bellatrix and Malfoy Sr. alone of the bunch. "I don't think your boss is going to be too pleased if you come back now without it, will he?" The thought came to me that I had to keep talking. That, if I didn't, the Death Eaters would attack. I had to get them to wait until everyone was in place and could, at some signal I didn't know, launch their attack. The Order could handle this – I just had to keep my head.

Meanwhile, Par chose to answer me. "Can I have glasssss ball too, Mère?"

"No," I hissed back at him. "So, what kind of prophesy are we talking about here?"

I imagined his pale grey eyes were, beneath his bone-white mask, fixed on my Runespoor. "Surely you jest, Harry Potter."

"Nope, not at all – though I must point out that my name is Alexandrie-Margaux. My name's on it, you see. It just say's 'Dark Lord,' though, for the other guy. Are you sure Voldemort's the right one? Are there any others out there vying for the title?"

I hadn't realized it was possible for someone to whisper apoplectically until "Cousin Trixie" did so. "You dare speak his name?"

"Name? It's only an anagram, Vol-"

She screeched this time, her wand making movements that I hoped weren't strange, silent spells. "Shut your mouth! You dare speak his name with your unworthy lips, you dare besmirch it with your half-blood's tongue, you dare-"

"Technically, my mother was a Muggle-born witch. Tommy dearest's father was just a regular old Muggle-"

Bellatrix shot a scarlet jet from her wand – a stunner – and Lucius busied his wand batting it away from me, where it might hurt the precious orb Acel was now attempting to digest.

My silent protectors saw it as their chance and all of a sudden, from every corner spells erupted at the collection of Death Eaters. I thrust Paracelsus gracelessly back into my pocket and did what I'd been told earlier to do once the fighting started: try not to get killed.

I cast the praesidis over myself and Tonks, then, anxious to get this ended, cast several expelliarmus into the tangled mess of Death Eaters beyond the smoke of someone's Flash-Bang Spell. I could feel Paracelsus curled tightly in my pocket, squirming to get as close to me as possible. The shaking of the great shelves and the orbs on them pervaded my bones. Ozone sharply hung in the air from the confused mixture of spells.

There was a tug at my wrist. "Some on," said Hermione-Tonks as she eyed the shelves worriedly. They could fall at any minute, and, even with the praesidis around the two of us – a dome-like shield of middling strength – it would not be fun to be caught underneath them when they fell.

I released the shield and ran with her. Where the others were, I did not know, only ran blindly with Tonks.

We came to the nearest door and pelted through it – the Dali-esque room of melting clocks. With a quick spell I vowed to learn from her later, Tonks spelled all the nails out of the desks that ringed the room out and charmed them to stand on their ends in front of the door. From the pieces of wood this left behind, she used a quick-defence spell to build a small barrier.

"Too small," she said, pulling me along after she finished this.

I could hear Lucius's voice carrying in from the cathedral full of prophesy orbs, "… the Dark Lord will not care for Nott's injuries as much as losing that prophesy – Jugson, come back here, we need to organize! We'll split-" Other male voices, indistinct from this distance, seemed to be trying to herd the Death Eaters after Tonks and myself… There were too many doors in this place to effectively trap a group. We had to keep them on the move so that the Order could pick them off one by one, guerrilla-style. There were what? Six of us, plus the three that had joined us at the Ministry? There were at least twelve Death Eaters that I'd seen…

We were bait again.

She pulled me into the dark, empty hallway we'd entered in, and, after the doors had ceased to spin, she sent locking spells at four of them and pulled us through the last… until we were in a circular amphitheatre, the stage in the middle holding only a stone archway with rotting black veil moving in its own slight breeze.

A body-body bind struck Tonks from the side as we entered, causing her to tumbled down the stone steps one after another until she landed, with a heavy thud, in the sunken pit that surrounded the archway… The room rang with the laughter of several Death Eaters – Bellatrix, her husband, her brother-in-law, and least three others who must have not fallen for the herding scheme. I jumped down several steps, to land on one of the raised seats about halfway up the room, and held my wand so tightly I thought it might slip out of my hand, I was sweating so hard. Paracelsus was hissing quietly in fright that I'd not let myself admit too.

"Ah," I said, taking stock of myself – alone, uninjured, for the moment, with a crowd of Death Eaters chasing after me if the Order members hadn't caught them already – and the six in front of me, one –Thorfinn Rowle, as I recognized as unchanged from his picture in the Smoke and Mirror, was bleeding, probably from a culteris he'd managed to avoid the worst of – while Dolohov, who I distinctly remember as having been bound with conjured ropes, leered at me in a way that I was far from even uncomfortable with, "Trixie, is this your husband? Seems like a nice enough bloke. I always get them mixed up, though: is he Rastaban or Rodolphus?"

Lucius drawled, ignoring my jibe (which hurt; I worked hard to create them. I wanted him to appreciate my work before killing me), "Potter, your race is run. You are smarter then the Dark Lord would give you credit for, bringing members of that infernal Order with you, but not smart enough. Now hand me the prophesy like a good girl and maybe we won't injure you or your friend here too badly before presenting you to our master." Dolohov's leer intensified and I had to restrain a shudder. How could Severus have ever fallen in with a crowd like this? And what would he do if he knew what his 'friends' were clearly thinking of? You think he'd emasculate them for me if I asked, because I don't want these men to be able to carry out such thoughts on anybody ever again…

"Now that's no fun, Uncle Lucy," I pouted, feeling the beads of sweat trickle down my forehead, my neck, my back, my thighs… My clothes were sticking to me now uncomfortably, my feet felt over-warm in my school shoes, and I was so afraid that, by Herne and Hecate, I could have melted into a puddle before them and wouldn't have noticed. I couldn't, wouldn't give in, though. This had been my idea, hadn't it? To spring their trap? To fight so that the varied, handsome, fresh-made world imagined existed somewhere beyond this dark fight could go on existing, so I could see it someday, preferably with Severus at my side. So I did the only thing I really could do. I, remembering that there were six of them and one of me, took a hopping step onto the next raised bench and continued. "My Runespoor, y'see, ate the thing, and probably won't give it up for months and months yet – he ate a beetle once, y'see, and didn't give it up for a month. He's only a baby, though, so you've got to forgive him. So how about I just head back to Hogwarts and just owl you the thing when he finally coughs it up?"

"You're not in the position to bargain, Potter."

My voice was getting shrill again, curse all. "Maybe I'm not, though I should point out, Lucy darling, that if you're not going to treat me like family, I'm Miss Black Potter to you. They wanted to hyphenate it too, but I said no, one hyphenate in a girl's name is enough, so I can understand your confusion-" Then every nerve in my body exploded and I heard myself scream with the unbearable pain of it. It wasn't as bad as Voldemort's – no one could hate like that man – but still it was more then enough that I didn't notice my legs had given out or that I'd tumbled down the steps until the crucio was lifted and I realized I was face-down, half-collapsed across the still – but, thankfully warm – body of Hermione-Tonks. I could have prayed, so grateful was I that she was alive, and that my wand was still, somehow, in my hands, though probably only because it was pinned beneath me. I willed more then cast the reversal for the body bind they'd placed on her, but she remained still – pretending nothing had changed. Top marks in Concealment and Disguise at the academy, I remember her mentioning. Then again, I always figured her as the type who'd be in local theatre clubs too. We needed it now. Stupid let's-just-herd-them-to-a-place-with-fewer-doors plan. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Trixie was laughing with a menace that had to be taught in Dark witch schools, it was so hauntingly made-for-tele. She was the Unforgivable-happy one, I remembered. She'd tortured Neville's parents to insanity. She'd probably happily do the same to me. "The ickle baby won't take its mewicine…" she commented in a horrible, mock-baby voice that would have curled paint had there been any available. I allowed myself to groan a little, as if I'd never been hit by something so painful before… every cell in my body ached for me to stop thinking, just forget my struggles and given in and give up… but I couldn't just do that. I'd Severus waiting for me after all, and soon I'd no longer be his student… And this, this bitch thought she could just take me out with a Cruciatus Curse? Not when I'd so much to live for… to kill for! I understood now why Severus hadn't nutius-edme that night, or any other night, even if he'd might have needed it. Sometimes the times weren't conducive to sending messages, not when it was your life at stake…

Still, it wasn't her I heard drawing nearer, but another I was surprisingly angered to notice. Male, by default, and in a slow, practiced way I associated with Draco. "Hmm," he said very close to me, prodding me with the toe of his shoe. Yes, I knew that voice. It was Draco's father. "I'd expected Potter," his hand grabbed my shoulder, "to put up a better fight," he began to roll me onto my back, "then-" I cast the first spell that came to mind straight into his gut.

"Suvula," I hissed, and discovered that, yes, The Awl Charm was very messy when used on a person as little bits of what had been Lucius Malfoy's midsection rained down on me.

I was glad I'd unfrozen Tonks, who I dimly watched as she jumped to her feet and reverted her face back to something more resembling someone who was not my classmate, because I felt frozen as ever so s… l… o… w… l… y… the body collapsed atop of me… The knees bent first, falling forward even as the rest of him flew back momentarily from the power of my spell before gravity took hold and pulled his torso downward… There was a bang somewhere, like a door being opened, as my pursuers entered the room, what few remained, and the seven Order members who'd come with us… He hit me with a thud that knocked the breath out of me, and somewhere near my navel I could feel his sticky, hot blood seeping into my shirt, cloying at my skin… Another thud came, and I heard cheers from various quarters as other Order members – Kingsley, Moody, Dumbledore – joined the fray from Gods knew where.

I scuttled backwards, desperate to be rid of his awful, dead weight. Lyrics ran through my head again:

I killed Lucius Malfoy.

I killed Lucius Malfoy.

I killed Lucius Malfoy.

But they were not good ones, nor was the song my mind put them too a happy one. I was horrified at myself. It was one thing to kill Grindylows, another to accidentally maim and blow to tiny pieces Death Eaters chasing me. It was another to have the corpse, still warm, land on top of you and…

I refused to scream, merely hyperventilated as I struggled to my feet. My free hand tried to wipe the blood off of me, not wanting that monster's life-stuff touching me, but I succeeded only in smearing it, covering my hand in it. I shuddered and, with the resolve that only comes post-torture, I screamed at Bellatrix Lestrange, finding her halfway up the steps now. "YOU BITCH!" I cried, not caring for the duels going on around me, and made my way was fast as I could after her as she tried to escape, scrambling up the stone benches and following the hem of her robes as she ran away. "YOU COWARD!"

Trixie aimed a violent purple curse over her shoulder, but it missed quite badly and hit a foul-smelling potion behind me as I chased her. I sent a glantius, The Rapid-Shot Spell, at her, but she deflected it like she'd every spell Order members had sent her way. "YOU TRY TO KILL ME AND RUN AWAY!" I sprinted out the hallway that had haunted my dreams in time to hear the lift doors snap shut. I threw my whole body at the button for a second and called up the shaft as the doors opened again. "COME BACK HERE AND FINISH THE JOB, TRIXIE!" I slammed my fist into the tiny blue button marked "Atrium" and fumed as it rose.

I caught sight of her exiting a lift opposite me as I scrambled out of my own.

"Come out, come out, little Harry!" she called, sing-songing unknowingly to the same tune I'd created for the death of her brother-in-law. "What did you come after me for, then? I thought you were here to avenge yourself, make me pay for hurting the ickle baby!"

"The name is Éléonore!" I shouted at her, my name, Éléonore! Éléonore! Éléonore! bouncing off the walls and screaming back at me. I couldn't hear her footsteps anymore, and whether that was because she'd stopped running or my name just had drowned them out, I neither knew nor cared, and flung battered body in the direction I'd last seen her and shrieked, "Crucio!" I was not some little girl, some naïve child of the Light! I'd spent ten damn years locked in a cupboard because of people like this woman! I'd been forced into a tournament I didn't want to be in because of this bitch's master, had seen Cedric – so good and kind and truly naïve in the ways of death and war – die because he'd just happened to be there; I'd suffered long into the night because of her and her compatriots, worrying whether or not my lover was going to come back to me alive. I knew you needed more than righteous anger to hurt her for long. You need to truly mean these curses. Damn this woman! This bitch! I hated her! I hated I hated I hated her! I wanted to hurt her – to hurt her as I'd hurt! It was my fault her master was back! My fault that the bastard that was her master had broken her and her kind out of Azkaban! My fault that unknown innocents had surely died because Death Eaters were running loose! My fault that Severus had to spy again and could die at any moment if they found out the truth, my fault that Umbridge had been allowed to teach at Hogwarts; mine that another human, however deserving, was dead! And, by Merlin, she screamed contemptibly loud, a disgusting cry of weakness. "I live with this pain every day, you bitch – you monster. You go around killing and torturing people just for the fun of it, but, no matter how many years you spent surrounded by Dementors, you don't know real suffering or what it's like to be dead inside!"

I held the curse for a minute, maybe two, before I grew exhausted with rage. My shoulders slumped and my wand went off point. I think I might have even shuddered a little. Bellatrix made no noise for quite a while after that besides pitiful half-moans.

A faint clapping came from behind me. I spun about and saw the thin, hooded, snakelike form of Lord Voldemort applauding me in the middle of the Atrium. "Months of preparation, months of effort… and my Death Eaters have let Harry Potter thwart me again."

I spat at him venom-lessly. I was too tired now, to weakened from the release of the self-contempt that had kept me going, to truly be angry right now. "I do my best, Tommy-boy."

His scarlet eyes narrowed a little. "I was right. We could be great, you and I. Such hate is… prodigious in one so young. It reminds me of myself, Miss Potter, when I was your age… It's not too late to join me. Lord Voldemort is not ungenerous… certain… pains could be forgiven if you'd join me…" His voice suddenly grew ardent, Southern-preacher-y, "We could conquer the world together and watch endless generations fall trembling before our thrones until the end of the earth!"

I stared blankly at him. "I wasn't aware the position of consort was open."

"It could be arranged…"

"Yes," I answered dimly, "I suppose it could…" I swallowed back a shudder of disgust. I wanted no one to even think of me that way except for Severus ever again. "Pity I'm not applying."

"Then I've nothing more to say to you, Miss Potter. "You have irked me too often, for far too long. ADVADA KEDAVARA!"

I dropped to the floor, and was equally surprised when Dumbledore appeared not a moment later in front of the golden gates.

)()()()()()()()()()()()()()(

I returned to Severus's rooms after dawn from the Headmaster's office, hyperventilating and panicky, not caring about the health of the other students as I wondered down to the dungeons in clothes covered with sweat and Lucius Malfoy's blood.

…the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches …

Whispers followed me in the hall. Paracelsus, still in my pocket through it all, whispered calming things and demanded to be left at home next time I wanted to pretend to be a vampire. I left him with Archimedes as I whispered, "Arcadia," to enter.

…born to those who have thrice defied him…

Severus was not back yet. I wanted so badly to see him safe again so he could hold me in his arms and lie to me, telling me everything would be alright. I climbed into the shower fully clothed and peeled my ruined things off in there. I prayed to drown in the stream, if only so I could be clean again. I'd killed again. I could have used any other spell, but I chose The Awl Spell, suvula…

…born as the seventh month dies…

After ages and half a bottle of shampoo, I wrapped myself in a towel and pandered into the bedroom, not bothering to dress or light a candle. I just collapsed onto the bed and dry sobbed. I was a monster whose only purpose was to kill or be killed…

…the Dark Lord will mark her as his equal, but she will have power the Dark Lord knows not…

Where was Severus? Why wasn't he here?

Why me? Why not anyone but me?

I heard the doorway slide open and snap closed. I heard the soft tread of Severus's feet and the falling of shoes and cloaks as he disrobed as he walked.

…and either must die at the hand of the other…

He was all but naked when he entered the room and collapsed onto the soft, welcome safety of his bed, surprised only in afterthought to find me there as well. He pulled me close to and held me tightly. I buried my face in his shoulder and thanked God and Merlin, Herne and Hecate, and all the gods of all the ages that he was alive. From the way he held me, I imagined he was doing the same.

…for neither can live while the other survives…

He kissed my hair, smelling no longer of blood but gardenia. I pulled him closer still and let my hands explore his uncovered body. His own hands moved to clasp and cup and caress various parts of me as my towel was dropped away. I directed his lips to mine and let our tongues stroke each other as I shifted off my side and onto my back…

…the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches …

…he moved with a fierce sense of possession over me, kissing me with an obstinacy that made it difficult to remember to breathe when our lips parted. All I wanted was him, and he, it seemed, had forgotten his self-imposed morals to allow himself this happiness in a world so full of death and war and pain…

…born as the seventh month dies…

…and, for the first time in recent memory, I felt truly alive.


	18. In Which I Have a Good, Old-Fashioned Family Vacation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I want to feel love! Love is all beautiful! I never used to know that! I was a fool! […] We'll make an island for ourselves on land, and we'll have children and love them and teach them to love life so that they can never be possessed by hate and death!"
> 
> \- - Lavinia Mannon in The Haunted from Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill -
> 
> Part Three: Year Six

The day Ephraim Caudwell died from his wounds, I climbed out of the flashy, ostentatious, and utterly impractical car Sirius had purchased with the settlement the MoM had quietly offered him the day after the Battle of the Department of Mysteries for the, a) slander of my good name, b) inducing the Daily Prophet News Network to print libellous articles against myself, and c) some other random something-or-other than meant they paid us not to point out to anyone their stupidity in front of Azkaban South. It was bright red – an Ascari Ecosse – and horribly expensive as well. The dealer had been more than a little bug-eyed when out of a nondescript hackney cab had come myself (in a two hundred Galleon Greco and Mancini dress), Tonks (blonde and blue-eyed and in a business suit), and Sirius (dressed for the occasion in Armani, making me think that maybe, if the Blacks hadn't instilled in him their pureblood nonsense, they'd at least made him appreciate expensive things) and had positively gawked at him when he wrote the check for the full amount. But it was the sort of thing that would impress the Dursleys, if Sirius had been anything else but a wizard, that is. As were the suits and the expensive dress. Granted, with the impressive Black fortune Sirius had also bought a motorcycle he intended to charm to fly, a large terrarium so that Paracelsus would stop trying to sleep in peoples' sock drawers, and half-a-dozen kites, but this as serious. He wanted the Dursleys to know that the Blacks were money and that they were going to do what he asked not because it was the right thing to do (which it was), but because a company he'd controlling interest in the company that owned the note on their mortgage.

It was only by magic that all three of us fit inside, but, Merlin, was it everything that my wardens would have wanted, and Sirius knew that much at least. I could see the heads at windows as I walked, wearily, up the walk to the front door, Tonks and Sirius, coming after. A black leather briefcase in Sirius's hands was my only luggage, which Tonks would kindly dis-transfigure when I got to my…

My room. I grimaced at the thought, causing Tonks to look at me worriedly. They didn't know the extent of it – I had to keep telling myself this. They didn't know what horrible, wretched creatures lived within. They'd not make me stay here – if only for a week – if they knew. I should probably have asked Tonks, who'd at least be staying with me, to hold onto my wand – so I didn't curse these demons back to the deepest pit of hell, where they belonged! I held my tongue though, remembering I could protect myself now if need be. After all, hadn't I killed Lucius Malfoy, Death Eater extraordinaire? Hadn't I cast the torture curse on the woman most famous for its use? I was dangerous; I was a solider, a hero, the saviour of wizarding kind! I had nothing to fear from them, these worthless people who didn't deserve to be called "aunt" or "uncle" or "cousin," as convention would have it. Blood meant nothing – family was built, was made, clabbered together from loved ones and lovers. Still, as I rang the bell, and whispered under my breath to "Cousin" Tonks, "Morituri te salutamus." We who are about to die salute you.

She poked me in the ribs at that, then smiled in a way I figured she had to have learned from her aunt, dearest Lucius's wife, Narcissa, at the horsy woman who answered the ring.

"Mrs. Dursley?" Tonks asked.

Petunia kept her eyes on Tonks, not seeing me at all. I doubt she would have recognized me anyway, wearing clothes that fit and with my glasses replaced with contacts that actually had my prescription (Tonks's idea, as she claimed it was a miracle mine hadn't been broken or fallen off in the DoM, but I liked them, and not just because things seemed so much the clearer with them in). I'd let my hair grow out since last summer too so that it extended a few inches past my shoulders now, taming its natural wildness to a drastic curl with its weight. In fact, if it hadn't been for the fact that Tonks's suit was an unusual shade of yellow for such things, I think we might have been confused for a trio of door-to-door Mormons.

I wish.

"I'm Jr. Auror Tonks," she pointed with her thumb over her shoulder, "That's Sirius Black," I couldn't hide my wry, Severus-learned smile as she realized what was going on, "and you of course remember Éléonore? Mind if we come in?"

Petunia looked like she'd rather have her teeth pulled right there on the doorstep. Tonks didn't care, nor did Sirius, and together they managed to push Petunia into the hall, drag me along with them, and sit us all in the living room, though Sirius and his cousin appeared to be the only ones wanting to have this conversation. Why couldn't we have just driven around London in his new Ecosse and pretended to be bank robbers or, I dunno, Mormons, I don't know. We had to come to Surrey and recharge Dumbledore's stupid blood wards to keep Voldemort from getting his hands on me for one more year.

Hello people, Voldemort's kind of succeeded in ruining my life every year already, I don't know why they thought me staying at this ghastly place would help me out any.

"I thought you said you wouldn't be bothering us anymore."

For the first time in my life I commiserated with my aunt. "I'd not be here if I wasn't forced to, believe you me."

"Then why are you here?"

I pointed at Sirius and slumped morosely, on the hideous couch. Any other house with any other people I could handle for a week. Gods above, I'd gladly not have left Severus's rooms for a week – and, now that I was safely out of my Fifth Year and as unlikely as a gnat to make the requisite grade in Potions to continue with his NEWT classes, there was no moral quandary for him to stress over and generally ruin perfectly good snogging sessions with. After such an emotionally trying thing as the battle at the DoM, it was wonderful to finally find release for all those pent up feelings with Severus… Even now, filled with such rage towards the last of my blood relatives, closing my eyes and thinking of him calmed me. We were happy together and would be happy together forever after, and we'd marry, and have children, and love them, and never have to worry about Dark Lords or society ever again… Maybe it was just a little girl's daydream, but it was my own, and guys didn't just give girls sliver-and-diamond bracelets engraved with lines from Ovid's Amores unless they'd serious intentions for them…

I opened my eyes again in time to catch the hideous china figurine that was flying at my face. I caught it, but the sudden movement of my arm was enough to startle Paracelsus, who'd been comfortably resting under my sleeve.

"Mère, why is she shouting?"

"So early in the morning?"

Sus, contemptuously, told Par and Acel, "It'sss almost noon, layaboutsss."

"But it'sss so loud."

"And ugly."

"It hurtsss my eyesss," Acel cried dramatically.

"You've not even opened your eyesss yet."

"The shouting-one'sss presence burnsss!"

I flicked each of the heads – gently – and scolded, "What have I told you about fighting?"

Resentfully, "Not to do it," Par admitted.

"In public, where Mugglesss," Acel continued dreamily.

Sus finished contemptuously, "Might see us, or before breakfast, but we've already eaten."

"I haven't!" I informed them, taking the briefcase from Sirius, who was explaining still to Petunia why I had to stay, marching up the stairs to Dudley's second bedroom. Let them sort it out if they wanted me here so badly. Me, I figured I'd been grown up enough lately to justify a wonderfully childish mope in "my" room. Reaching the room, I wrenched the door open with all of my strength and smiled a little as it banged into the wall behind. It was hard to enter the room, given how many boxes had been stacked in front of the door – evidently the room had returned to its original purpose as a storage area – but I made it to the bed eventually. There I let Paracelsus curl onto a patch of sunlight there before moving to the desk. Sure enough, in the top drawer were a pair of screwdrivers I'd nicked ages ago to try to fix the alarm clock Dudley had smashed against the wall, oh, when he was eight, I think it was. Never did fix the clock, but a flat head screwdriver had so many uses…

"Now," I informed the Runespoor, walking back to the door. Four locks of varying types and strength stretched across the door jamb, "we have to stay here for a week."

"I thought you said."

"That we'd be staying with grand-père."

"While the sun isss at it'sss hottest."

I sharply jammed the head of the screwdriver between the metal of the top lock plate and the wood. "I know." There was a pleasant cracking sound as the wood splintered. I pulled back harder, then repositioned the screwdriver. "So did I. But Dumbledore and Sirius think that, for my own protection, I've got to recharge the wardsss here. Tonkssss will be covering the night shift with me, and Remusss and Siriusss and Severusss and Fleur will be keeping me company during the day, to make sure my wardensss don't mistreat me." Well, that was a lie; they would each be popping up in turns to keep me safe from Death Eaters, but they could keep me safe from the inside horrors as well. One day I'd have to tell Sirius – Father – and Severus the truth of what had gone on here, but not until they were old and grey, unable to exact any revenge that I'd not already taken…

"The bearded-one isss stupid to send you here for your safety, Mère."

Acel raised his head to watch what I was doing curiously, or else look at something in my general direction curiously. In the way that made me curious if there were different dialects of Parseltongue, he offered, "Fiat iustoque pereat mundussss." Let the right be done and the world will perish.

"This nest smellsss of pain and evil-doingsss."

I shook my head to rid myself of the hair that had fallen into my eyes, then slammed the screwdriver down again. The lock clattered to the floor. I started in on the next one. I could have just asked Tonks to charm them off for me, or use the screwdriver properly to remove them, but this was just so much more destructive and conducive to my childish mope. "Can't I just destroy thingsss with a screwdriver without Latin having to come into it?"

"No."

"Of course not."

"I thought you needed orange juice and vodka to have a screwdriver?"

I glared at my dear Runespoor and wondered not for the first time why Archimedes thought I might be a good parent for the egg his statue held. Not for the first time, I wished Severus was a Parsel Mouth, if only to give the snake some masculine presence in his life.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

I was searching the kitchen for orange juice when a knock came at the door. I was in my prison alone, for the moment. Tonks had had to leave for work about half-hour ago, while Vernon was at work himself and my aunt and cousin had chosen to keep scarce, for this week at least. Realizing the futility of my effort, I set my glass upon the counter, looked over at Paracelsus and saw that he hadn't caused himself any permanent harm with the toaster, and headed towards the front door.

Peeking through the spy-hole, I about squealed in joy. Yes, the day after next would be my last bloody day in this prison, but still I was counting the minutes until I could head back to HQ. That sobered me for a moment. Remus, who'd been the day before to watch after me while Tonks was at work, had told me Ari Caudwell and her children – Oliver, a Third Year Hufflepuff, and Alycone, who'd be joining me in Gryffindor for her Second Year in the fall – had been moved into HQ now that Ephraim was dead and buried. I think the excuse was that they worried that they wouldn't be able to feed themselves, but I knew what it really was. They wanted to make sure Ari didn't do anything drastic to get avenge her husband's death, even though every Death Eater that had participated in the battle were captured, save Bellatrix, who I'd tortured, who'd escaped with Voldemort. It was yet another thing to add to my list of things I needed to atone for.

Still, I opened my door with my wand fixed on the figure before me. "How do I know you're really Severus?" I was wearing a pink blouse and a white skirt, no shoes, and can't have looked more imposing then a housefly.

"Ovid," was what he offered by way of identification. I pushed the door open further at that and threw my arms around him. He pushed me inside before I could do anything too embarrassing, and locked the door behind us.

Sensing his mood, I let go of him and went back into the kitchen, where I found my dear Paracelsus had moved on from the toaster and was now investigating the coffee pot, and went back to searching for some sort of fruit juice. I'd a craving for something that wasn't carbonated, which was all the Dursleys seemed to have. Seemingly disinterested, "I didn't think you'd come."

"Someone has to watch over you, make sure The Girl-Who-Lived doesn't get into too much trouble."

I slammed the refrigerator shut with unintentional force. Back to that, were we? I'm only going to say this once, and you remember it, because it makes me turn all shades of Weasley red just to think it: the only one I've ever loved, ever kissed, ever… slept with has been one Severus Eteocles Snape. The only one I ever intend to love, kiss, and/or sleep with is the above stated Severus Eteocles Snape, despite is unfortunate middle name, and if that means I'm a spinster for the rest of my life, I really don't care. I've always known I never belonged to this era, to this world even. I would only ever give my heart to one man. I would only ever love once, and all else for me would mean nothing. I was old before my time, and I'd be an unmarried widow if Severus left me. I had lived a lifetime in the single year we'd been together. That was all I needed, though I wanted so much more. "So, what's been going on in the real world?" I asked, hastily changing the subject.

Without looking at him, I knew he raised his eyebrow at my lack of subtly, but he humoured me anyway as I went back to the fridge and started pulling out the stuff for a marinara sauce. "And I suppose this," I heard the movement of his arms as he gestured at the kitchen around me, "doesn't count for real?"

I looked up from the mushrooms I was washing and looked at the room around me. The mess of Azkaban South is a typical kitchen that you'd find in any house of this era – retrofitted in the '60s and due soon for another – with white laminate cabinets that were starting to peel and chipping doors of a nameless blue. The countertop was something plastic, but had lasted, and the cooker was the only appliance still original to the '60s, although it could not have may more years left in it. Still, it worked and cleaned up well, unlike the stainless-steel fridge or dish washer or random bits of modern technology that one didn't see at the Hogwarts kitchens, where meals were still cooked in giant hearths and bread ovens and all the washing was done by hand. No, these bits of machinery showed every grubby fingerprint, every stain, even after you scrubbed your hardest. And, believe me, I've cleaned these things in my time, and it would never be good enough. The pots and pans were Teflon-coated, the utensils I was coking with plastic-and-Teflon as well. Even the table Severus was sitting at was a fake wood, non-real thing. Everything in it was drawn from underground – something live and vibrant thing's corpse compressed for so long it became black and oily – and turned by some alchemical process to plastics that could be melted and shaped to form the countertop I cooked on, the pots I cooked with, the table I ate at, and the wrapping my food came in. And people asked what the living had to do with the dead, when everything they lived in was made up of dead leaves and dead trees and dead everything from so long ago! It was all fake, fake fake fake, and yet, oddly enough, it seemed more real to me now, as I shook the plastic colander I washed the mushrooms (which had come in a Styrofoam package and been covered in plastic shrink wrap) to drain the water, then Hogwarts ever had. Maybe Hogwarts had always been a dream of mine, where I imagined terrible, yes, but great things had happened to me. Maybe magic didn't exist, and it was just my imagination that I was a special girl in an already special world, and that I'd always been and always would be the Dursleys' cook and maid, and if I was lucky an abusive boy would take me away to be his cook and his maid and his whore… "Tell me of the things I've dreamed then," I said at long last. I found a canister of tang in a cabinet, and filled the glass (partway full of vodka, stolen from Petunia's own private stores behind the laundry detergent) I'd left on the counter with a measure of that. I topped it off with water straight from the tap. "Being here for too long makes me forget that anything else," anything better, "exists." I took a sip and made a face. I turned to Paracelsus then. "I thought you said it wasss supposed to taste good."

"Professor Sinistra likesss them."

"And you didn't use orange juice. Maybe that makesss a difference."

"I think you made a Fuzzy Cosmonaut," Sus offered unhelpfully.

"You drink it then," I poured the drink into the now empty Styrofoam container and went back to chopping the mushrooms. Almost immediately the Runespoor crawled out from under one of the burners and Sus ducked his head inside, the other two looking on interestedly.

Maybe he sensed my own mood, or maybe he felt sorry for being cold to me a moment ago, I dunno, but I didn't notice Severus come up behind me until he took the knife from my hands. "Must you always savage your ingredients?"

"They're all going into a pot; it's not going to matter in the end what they look like." Nonetheless, I let him to chop the mushrooms, tomatoes, onions – all the while watching his hands as they worked, meticulously cutting it all into equal, perfect bits – and added the spices and olive oil when I wasn't watching him.

"That's why you'll never excel in Potions."

True. "That's why I keep you around," I told him jokingly, then sobered. It occurred to me then that, the way he was acting, something was wrong again. Another blasted moral quandary, or he was having what Tonks would call a "Remus Moment" and insist that he was too old, dangerous, etc, etc for me. Almost reflexively, I grabbed a sponge and began to wipe down the table and countertops. "What's happened?"

"Fudge was sacked last night – rather unanimously, though they were still arguing over who's to replace him when I left this morning."

It wasn't a murder. I don't think I could have handled another one. The Brockdale Bridge had been destroyed by Voldemort two days before, killing several dozen and covering the Muggle news with speculations about bridge funding and corrupt contractors. Emmaline Vance, a middle-aged, matronly woman that reminded me a little of Mrs. Weasley, though a little greyer, had been found raped, murdered, and mauled in a dumpster off Tottenham Court Road just yesterday. Hers was a little noticed death, as Amelia Bones, poor Susan's aunt, was found dead in a room with no windows that had been locked from the inside, with a thousand tiny marks all over her but none, even in combination, enough to cause the blood loss to kill her the same day. And, besides, there was surprisingly little blood found, most of what was coming from several different males. I let out the breath I hadn't known I was holding and resumed my compulsive scrubbing. Dead things could never get clean, not truly. I should just burn it all and make the Dursleys' get new furniture… But what did I care what they ate on? They could eat in a sty for all I cared, they were pigs enough.

After a moment, I felt he was waiting for me to say something, so I gave a general, "Oh," and went back to scrubbing the table. Why did he have to bring up all the deaths again? There were just so many… How was one girl like me supposed to avenge them all? Would a single AK to Voldemort stop it all, make it all right? No, that wouldn't be enough either. What about poor girls like Susan Bones, who'd family been torn apart because I'd not the strength to kill Voldemort like I should of in the DoM? And Cedric's parents, what could I say to them to make the fact that their son had been cold and dead and buried a year now, when, had he lived, he might have-

Oh what's the use? I'm only a weapon, born to destroy The Dark Lord so others can be happy. And Severus, standing there, looking at me with those dark black eyes that understood me better than I understood myself and loved with such a strength as I was unworthy of.

"Something's wrong," he said, lowering the knife and walking over to me. I refused to look at him. People like me don't deserve people like him, so good and kind and willing to risk everything just to make the world a better place. Me? I just got people pulled into trouble and killed people's fathers and tortured people's wives, however much either of them deserved it…

"Nothing's wrong," I lied. Or maybe it wasn't a lie. This was the way things were supposed to be as I waited to become some other man's – some street thug, some pimp, some guy in a low-level job that'd never go farther because all he had he spent on drink – cook and maid and whore. Severus had an odd morality about him, one that'd make me untouchable for my youth and "innocence" and whatnot as soon as he got his head back on right and realized that he'd sex with a student (namely, me) multiple times in the last week of the school year, even if that student (me) was most likely (unless something bizarre happened, like they mistook Hermione's potions work for my own) no longer his student in particular after that school year. He was probably feeling so guilty that he came here today to break up with me – if that was the correct term for whatever our together was – and wanted to "just be friends" for the rest of our, probably (mercifully) short lives.

He grabbed my wrist, extricated the sponge, and lifted me onto the countertop so that my eyes were level with his. "Something's wrong," he stated again. Then, more timidly then I'd ever heard him speak before, "Are you pregnant?"

I looked at him askance. "That would be a bad thing?" Honestly, I'd never given any thought as to whether or not our multiple unions had resulted in a child… though, considering the contraceptive potions I'd taken, it was hardly likely. Still, it had never occurred to me that Severus would see a child as a "wrong" thing. Maybe unfortunate, young as I was, but not something to be the first "wrong" thing he would think of when I was trapped as I was in a place that I hated with people that I hated when I should have been with people I loved in a house papered with pictures of me and newspaper clippings of my deeds, or in Severus's rooms at Hogwarts. What I wouldn't give to stay in that island of dreams and happiness forever, not having to worry about this "real" world and all the fake, dead things within it!

"You're only fifteen!" I knew it. That was going to be a problem… Always a problem! Was it not that we loved? Wasn't that all that mattered?

"Sixteen in a month's time," I said with a calm that I did not feel. "But, no, I don't think so."

He could have had the grace to look less relieved. "Severus," I asked timidly and cursing myself for not just coming out and saying it. I gathered my Gryffindor courage and proceeded. "What are we?"

His hands were still on my waist, where they had griped to lift me, and I felt their hold grow tighter. "What do you mean?" I had the feeling he'd been dreading this question. Spies didn't have girlfriends. Heroines did not date spies, but rather handsome young heroes and/or princes. But I had this idea that love would save us – save us both from the hell-holes of our past, from the war before us. Love would make the fact that I'd killed men and tortured women make the reality of war less traumatizing. That, if we did not allow ourselves this compulsion, that we'd both become as cold and empty as the monsters we fought and, when the war was at last done, we'd be nothing but corpses that happened to have once been men, all our emotion lost to us in time… We wouldn't even be in pain, like we were now, but would just be…

"I mean, where do you see all this going? I mean, I know you love me," I fiddled with the bracelet he gave me and tried to look into his eyes, "But what is the plan? Are we just going to go on like this?"

Severus was silent for a long moment. I couldn't look into his eyes after all. I just stared at the spot just above his collar, where I could see the flesh of skin I had known with my hands, my mouth and wished to know again… I loved Severus, I knew he loved me, and I wasn't going to let him just throw that away, but I'd no idea how to make him stay, how to keep loving me. I'd been so little loved in my life, I don't think I could handle the loss of it… Then, finally, he kissed me fully on the lips. "I want whatever you want."

"That doesn't help me any," I kissed him back, shamelessly undoing his shirt buttons as I did so in the joy I felt, so I could put my hands on his strong chest and heal the scars that covered them with a thousand kisses and a hundred more. "Would it be so bad, really, if I got pregnant?"

"Didn't work out so well for Margaret Beaufort."

I pouted. "She was only thirteen when she gave birth to Henry VII – not a fair comparison at all. It's more," I thought for a moment, at a loss for a second, "more Sophie of Mecklenburg-Güstrow, or Anna of Denmark." They'd married at fourteen; Sophie'd her first child at sixteen, like I'd be shortly. She was a scholarly woman… They both had come from such large families and had large ones of their own, like the Weasleys. It must be nice to grow up like that, never alone, knowing that you were loved… But, now, I wasn't pregnant.

With a laugh, "Did you spend your entire childhood closeted away, reading?"

"No – I cooked and cleaned too…" and I'd still be if Hagrid'd not saved me. "But, really, Severus, do you see marriage? Children? Do you even want any of that? I'm not saying that's what I'm asking for – I just want to know."

"I've never given it much thought, honestly." But that was a lie. He had to have thought about it too, an only child like he was, from a family just as cruel as Azkaban South. He had to have known when he was making love to me that a child could be born of it, that even the best contraceptive potions weren't foolproof.

"How does a white picket fence and herd of little Severuses sound?"

I felt his nose crinkle (my intended effect) as one of his hands left my waist to duck under my skirt. I liked the feel of his hand as he pulled it upwards, running it along the sensitive flesh of my inner thigh, and tingled with it. "Delightfully dreadful."

"Especially if they have the Prince nose."

"Or the Potter hair."

I was working on his belt buckle now, which was a hard skill to master, believe you me. "Or brooded half as much as you do."

"Or had your moodiness," he continued. One hand was toying with the band of my underwear, the other on the small of my back and pulling me closer.

"I am not moody."

"Whatever you say, Éléonore," he said, a hint of condescension in his tone. I could feel him pressed close against me, a welcome warm that only a bit of cloth separated me from, and I could feel my veins beginning to course with the familiar desire. With a sigh, I slipped off the counter and went to stir the sauce. As much as having sex in my aunt's kitchen seemed the perfect revenge, I wanted nothing good and pure to become tangled up in this hell-hole, and maybe he realized this – I don't know, only that he continued to let me torture the veg that was to go into the pot without comment.

Severus looked around him then, as if examining the house in which I was raised. "This was not what I was expecting the home of the Baronne of Calais to look like." It was a house of dead things, and I just another dying thing within it.

"It's not my home, that's why – it's just a house I grew up in, if you could call it that." For some reason this irritated me even further, and dropped the last of the veg into the pot. Why couldn't I just leave? I'd take any risk if it meant I didn't have to be here.

It was then I heard a car pull up in the drive, and a thrill of excitement ran through me. Becoming dizzy, I turned to face him so fast, "Severus?" I asked. "That's my aunt." He nodded his understanding. "Can I tell her you're a vampire?"

He looked at me strangely then, "Why?"

"Because it'd be fun?"

"Sometimes I don't understand you at all, Éléonore."

Paracelsus, lifting his middle head from the now empty mushroom container, chose to speak up then as I faked a look of sorrow. "You can tell."

"Her that I'm."

"Hic." I glared at my baby Runespoor and asked myself why I'd thought it was a good idea to listen to any recipes he gave me, whether spied on from Professor Sinistra or not. But I only shook my head and disposed of the dregs of his Fuzzy Cosmonaut. After all, what could one say at a time like this?

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I didn't end up killing the Dursleys, though, for which I am amazingly surprised. At the end of the week I was taken away to HQ, where the normal, dreamlike business of dealing with the reports that were coming in daily of people who'd gone missing or been found, dead or near so, and the plots and plans that Voldemort was hatching. They no longer tried to hide much from me, the Order; only things they knew would upset me unnecessarily, like a Muggle girl Alycone's age that'd been found hanging from shackles in her own home, dead and clearly raped by multiple Death Eaters before getting to that point. I found out anyway – it was hard to keep anything from anyone in HQ if you hung around it long enough. But Sirius, Remus, Tonks, and I were the only full-time residents… though Ari, Oliver, and Alycone were making a run for it.

With her husband dead, Ari seemed thrown back into the war she'd managed to move past so many years ago with a suddenness that she was unprepared for. She was angry, at first, desperately sad and angry. She was not a dueller, but she knew the law front to back, and threw herself into legal battles with a ferocity that made us Gryffindors pale. She brought up the charges on Dolohov's estate for the murder of her husband personally, even though she was not a criminal attorney, getting everyone at Dunn, Hastings, and McGully involved in some aspect with either that case or one of the hundred others she created in those first few weeks after Ephraim died. There were charges against the Ministry for failing to properly secure their building from Death Eaters, for failing to acknowledge the war, for general incompetence… charges against each of the Death Eaters involved, including several in Sirius's name on my behalf. Then there were the charges against Umbridge, against the ex-Minister Fudge… It all made even my head spin.

Ari was at her office so much that Oliver and Alycone, suffering in their own ways, were seemingly forgotten in their mother's pain. Since the "adults" were all busy with the war, I did my best by them, the way I did my best for whoever was in HQ at the time. With Mrs. Weasley at the Burrow this summer, Andi busy at The Sleeping Dragon, the adults of the house busy as bees with one thing or another, and myself without anything, even homework, to do until OWL results arrived, I took over the care of the house. I supposed I should have felt like a slave girl again, cooking and cleaning and generally doing everything that everyone else was too busy to do, but it was different. HQ was, despite it all, my home. I was Sirius's adopted daughter, this was Sirius's house, and it all needed to be done someway or another. So I put food on the table, made sure everyone who was in the house ate, found beds for those who crashed here after assignments, helped Oliver with his summer homework at the warm, real kitchen table, and generally didn't allow myself a moment to think about how much I hated the Dursleys and hated myself for letting it be that people like Ephraim Caudwell and that Muggle girl Alycone's age had to die.

But it was there. A blinding thing, when it bubbled over. When Victor Talbot, a Ravenclaw who'd graduated my Second Year and was now working at Dunn, Hastings, and McGully as well as for the Order, so much as mentioned where I could overhear something about one of Ari's cases, I felt the monster rise within me. When I saw Alycone, red-eyed but trying not to show it, lying on one of the couches in the library reading her Sino-Japanese comics, I felt the fiend within me burn with rage. When I flooed for Madam Pomprey or Augustus Pye to patch someone up, or listened to the Order meeting as I bustled about the kitchen, aware of the few weary eyes on me as I cooked dinner for those who'd be staying without the benefit of magic, stupid RRUW, or generally looked at any of my tired and world-weary friends, who looked like they'd waken up to discover their nightmares were real. The work keep the hate and worry at bay, though I always knew when it was there, growing inside of me like a parasite.

It was not all that bad, though, for all it sounds like it might have been. There were moments of joy that could be captured, moments of happiness only slightly tainted by the shadow that had settled fully over magical Britain.

My OWLS, for instance, where not only did I get the expected O in Defence and D in HoM, but also scraped an O in Charms. Despite the fact that I only got these grades, I'm sure, because of my fanatical searching for ways to protect myself from Voldemort's intrusions and from Fourth Year's attempt to keep me alive through the Tournament, I was thrilled with my grades – meaning I could do whatever I wanted with them, if I ever could figure out what I wanted to do. I baked a cake that night, to go with dinner, but of course no one asked why I might be baking one, whether or not there was any special significance for one to be present. It was just a few scragglier members of the Order anyway, the type of people I doubt Sirius would have let me be around if they weren't Order members, and I didn't care what they thought or not. I did wonder now and again what they thought, these Knoctern men and women, about The Girl-Who-Lived making their dinner and cleaning up after them, but it was not a strong worry.

What I was worried about was, that, though easily nine o'clock, none of the adults of the house had come home. Oliver and Alycone had long ago eaten (the latter in the library with her comics and Quidditch magazines) and the noises drifting from upstairs had grown dim. Ari I could understand, in a way, and Victor Talbot had been sent on occasion to fetch his boss from her offices and see she got some sleep and a decent meal, at least, but Victor wasn't due to report for another day or so. The others, though, made me think that something was terribly, terribly wrong. I worried so deeply about them and what might be happening I barely paid attention to the casserole I was dishing into three plates, loading with bread and other offerings, and setting in the cabinet charmed to keep dinners of these sorts warm for whichever of my family happened to be gone for it that night. I was searching for the wizarding version of Tupperware when I heard a hissing come from behind me:

"Put that out!" Par hissed with all the determination of a ten-year-old telling off his five-year-old brother at Mudungus Fletcher, who'd lit his fluxweed pipe and now was spewing the foul-smelling smoke all about my clean kitchen.

Acel continued, "Mère doesn't like it when scale-lessss."

"Onesss spit smoke in her cooking-place."

Dung looked at me askance as Sus tried to knock the pipe from his hand with a particularly violent sway of the head. "He wants you to put out your pipe."

"Ah, com' on, Ely. Can't a bloke 'ave a smoke after 'is supper?"

I'd had this argument with him at least a thousand times, or so it seemed. "I never said you couldn't smoke, Dung, only that you're not to do it in my kitchen." I found my Tupperware and began spooning the leftovers into it. Par and Sus continued to glare with unblinking snake eyes at him, while Acel appeared to be trying to stick her head into the bowl of the pipe.

After a moment more, he snuffed his pipe, gathered his rags about him, and left, muttering, "Aye, Gen'ral Potter ma'am," under his breath. Sus hissed at him, and he hurried out.

I took his plate and put in the pile of others to wash, and before long I was left alone in the kitchen, Sirius, Remus, and Tonks still not home… I went into the basement, but another load of wash into the basin and was again surprised, as I'd no right to be, having known I was a witch for six years, when it started doing itself. What was dry, I folded, and carted upstairs to the proper rooms.

"Aly," I reminded the girl on my way up, "I'm going to the market tomorrow; is there any thing you need?" She shook her head without looking at me. I'd long since stopped bothering to ask if she wanted to come with. I crossed the hall to her brother's room and knocked on the door. Peeking my head in (knowing well from the Weasleys how messy teenage boys could be), I asked the same of Oliver.

Somewhat embarrassed to ask, "Could you get the stuff for the pudding you made last night again?"

"Sure. You wanna come with?"

"Sure," he said, again with a pink tinge to his cheeks. I just shook my head and continued dropping laundry off in rooms (putting Tonks's in Remus's room, for no other reason then to be contrary) and picking up wet towels and discarded socks as I went. Kretcher, by rights, should be doing this, but he'd not left the attic in a month and wouldn't have done it anyway. I didn't mind.

So I carted the laundry down, washed the dishes, and sipped tea in the kitchen until the floo rang. Someone had to be about, in case something happened…

"Operator?" a voice I knew to be Kingsley's asked.

I answered, "What's your emergency?" and was inordinately pleased that he knew of Muggle culture enough to get this, at least, and smiled at him as he chuckled grimly.

"There's been a sighting of the Carrows in Gloucestershire – Kempley, last I heard – and-" And, most likely, he was stuck in the Auror office doing paperwork and surrounded by Jr. Aurors that were no better trained then tapioca, and he needed people who actually knew how to handle themselves among dangerous, dangerous people.

"Say no more. I'll have Hestia and Elphias check it out," and did just that.

And I was left to worry, mistress in a house of children, and wait for… maybe news, maybe the arrival of the ones I loved, maybe even Godot… and watch the clock on the mantle count out the days and hours…

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There were trolls in the West Country.

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A family of five (a man with spectacles and a hair plug, a woman who dyed her hair blonde against the grey, a fifteen-year-old girl, a twelve-year-old boy, and a Muggle-born who'd have received his Hogwarts letter in two days time) burned to death in their Kempley home. At least one appeared, to the medical examiner's astonishment, to have spontaneously combusted from the inside out.

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Fenrir Greyback and his pack were running in Shropshire. A group of Aurors tried to run them out of Felton during the new moon, during which time three Aurors suffered broken bones, Tonks a broken nose, and only five "cubs" were actually captured. The other thirty or so ragtag werewolves escaped, coming off much better in the fight.

The youngest of the five was a boy no older than three, was called Raul. From what I understand the oldest, a girl my age who answered to Dianica, was rather attached to the adorable, precocious boy more so than even her other three captives.

At the changing of the guard, Dianica quickly snapped the necks of the other cubs – Raul first – so that the evil non-werewolves wouldn't hurt them or try to turn them against their pack. Though they watched her carefully after that, she was found hanging by a scrap of her own dress one morning not long before my birthday. Remus, who had tried talking to the girl (being the most civilized werewolf any of us knew), said it was a waste, and kept to the upper floors of the house for days.

Though I never said anything, I felt that it was a brave thing for the girl to do – probably the hardest thing she had to do in her life, something that she thought, however wrongly, had to be done to protect the cubs she was put in charge of. Perhaps Raul was even her own child, the ages were right, and she didn't want to see him tortured, or whatever she thought the MoM would do to her baby boy, and crying out to her to help him, save him, not knowing she would have been powerless even to tend his wounds in that cage.

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And so it went on, until I found it was my birthday, and a party was thrown in my honour and presents given in the formal dining room that Andi had worked, in her spare time, to turn into a festive place, brightly lit and beautifully decorated, with the Triwizard Cup severing as a vase for a handful of summer blooms. Severus snuck into my rooms that night (feeling like a "bloody teenager" when he did so, which amounted to once or twice a week) and made love to me in the shower. I could have sworn that the lines the tiny tiles made in my back as I pressed up against the wall showed through my shirt the next morning, the way Sirius was watching me, but nobody said anything, if anyone knew. I did, however, find a box of contraceptive potions and a pamphlet for St. Bernard's on my pillow the next evening, but it's better than being threatened with marriage to Fred again…

Time wore on, and I was named Quidditch Captain, for which another party was thrown, for which Sirius cooked and, the next morning, landed half those in attendance in bed or over the porcelain throne with food poisoning – something which was, to my sorrow, repeated after Sirius's "Éléonore, Oliver, and Alycone go back to Hogwarts tomorrow" bash. With me on the Hogwarts Express (however ill it made the three of us), I worried over who'd cook proper meals for them from now on, and hoped I left enough in the fridge for them to make it through until Mrs. Weasley had time to check in on them.

Despite the war, I thought, with some relief as I fled the first meeting of the "Slug Club," which no one, for God knows what reason, thought to warm me of, and join Alycone in the nearest girl's loo, that things were, despite all the death and all the hate and all the fear, despite Voldemort and the prophesy, life was getting better. I was loved, I would never – ever – be going back to Azkaban South again, had learned to drive Sirius's Milan red Ascari Ecosse with a fake licence that said I was twenty, and a beau in Severus that I never could have imagined years previously. I was happy…

It was a strange feeling.

…an only lasted until the Welcoming Feast, which was unappetizing after what I'd managed to keep down from the Slug Club's lunch, when Dumbledore, out of nowhere announced: "We are pleased to welcome a new member of the staff this year. Professor Slughorn is a former colleague of mine who has agreed to resume his old post of Potions Master." My whole body went numb as I realized what this meant; my eyes caught Severus's, who was looking back at me from the Head Table, and tried to force the feeling of betrayal I felt onto him, just so he'd realize how angry I was at his deception… How long had he known? A week? Maybe two – I'd not seen him in that. Blast him and his morals, I'd … I wanted to cry. "Professor Snape, meanwhile, will be taking over the position of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher."I put my head into my arms on the table, and tried to think, cursing Sirius the whole time as the nausea rolled in me.


	19. In Which I Underestimate the Ingenuity of Complete Fools

Though still cursing Sirius for his idea of cooking, I made my way quickly out of the Great Hall. Not for a moment did I think of heading for the tower, where Ron and Hermione, talking quickly about this latest development, were heading. I'm not even sure they noticed I'd ducked off towards the dungeons, where I could only hope the House Elves had delivered my things. Because, honestly, I'd liked last year's set-up and would very much like to continue with it. If he wouldn't be too much of a blockhead, a Snake with a Lion's morals.

Archimedes was expecting me when I got to his floor. Arc and Edes were playing, oddly enough, backgammon while Him stared at the wall behind his statue. With a movement I took to be a snake's shrug, Arc spat out the piece he held in his mouth and gave me a once over. "He's been waiting for you, Speaker."

Speaking to the wall, "Yessss…" Him drawled, "He isss very anxiousss, or isss it restlessss?"

"Isss that the move you're going to make? Humph," Edes informed the first head. "Scale-lessss onesss, what do you expect, Him? They bring politicsss and preditorssss into their nestssss."

"Politicsss isss stupid."

"Snakesss learned long ago that pair-bonding isss one thing, politicsss another, and not to confuse the two. And, yessss, that's the move I'm making. If you haven't noticed, Sussss, I'm wining by five."

"Gamesss are stupid."

"You're the stupid one, Him."

I so did not need this. "Let me in?"

"Sure," Arc shrugged again.

"I like you, and he likesss you too."

"The password is 'Pala."

I didn't bother to ask, as they melted out of the way, why I might need a password if I could just ask them nicely to let me in, but what can you do? "Thanksss guysss."

Severus was pacing, a half-drunk glass of cognac resting on the mantle, and his hands, normally so perfectly controlled, betrayed him. He looked like a man determined to say something, something resolute which he does not really want to do, and as if, if paused, he might not ever be able to make himself say it.

I knew what he wanted to say, the Éléonore,-I-simply-can't-allow-myself-to-take-advantage-of-you-while-I'm-your-professor,-never-mind-that-I-found-out-I-was-going-to-be-the-DADA-teacher-two-weeks-ago-when-previously-we-thought,-rightly,-that-you'd-not-have-the-gades-to-continue-on-as-my-NEWT-Potions-student-and-therefore-have-no-conflict-of-interest-like-I've-created-now-by-accepting-this-position-I've-wanted-since-I-started-teaching,-which,-problematically,-was-when-you-were-still-a-toddler speech I'd been dreading… Instead of asking the question I most wanted to know – why he hadn't told me that this wonderful, wonderful thing had happened at last for him, I sat down on the couch behind which he was pacing and curled into a ball upon it.

"I'll do self-study Defence again."

With the sigh of one at the end of long battle, "I can't ask you to do that. I was-"

"I don't feel like fighting, Severus. I'll just continue my self-study; maybe take my Defence NEWT this year. And we can just continue on as we are, no problems, no questions asked, and that'll be the end of it. Besides, what use have I for essays when there's a homicidal maniac after me?"

"Éléonore," he began.

Without pause, I continued, a slightly possessed tone creeping into my words, "I mean, I did well enough at the Department of Mysteries, didn't I? I didn't die. That's always good. And we caught several Death Eaters, several bad, bad people who will surely escape before long and do more harm, but, at this moment, can't hurt anyone but themselves in their cages – if we should be so lucky," I said, growing both frenzied and dysthymic the longer I spoke, remembering Dianica, the werewolf girl I'd never met, and her possible son Raul. "That's a good thing right, that evil is stopped, however briefly… and, if we keep stopping it, again and again and again, maybe, just maybe, we'll stop evil forever, by pushing it back a little every time it gets a hold… Voldemort's just the current Dark Lord. It was Grindelwald before him, Shalace before him… Telchine… Curum Lan… Eternity's got to end sometime, doesn't it?"

"Éléonore," he tried again.

But I was shaking now the with emotion, perhaps a bit too overwhelmed to be, after two months, with my lover in a place that was safe and smelled of the mint that was him. "I mean, evil can't win can it? That's not the point of it all, is it?" I felt tears well, and my stomach ache. I changed trains to keep them from falling, "And Lucius is dead, that's … good… isn't it? Isn't it?" That wasn't working. It'd only made things worse.

With piercing concern, "Éléonore, I think you should lie down."

I moved to fight him that, but, before I could say anything more, I found myself rushing past him to the loo, and felt last night's dinner reassert itself. "I'm going to… I dunno, something bad to Sirius for insisting he cook last night." A realization hit me then. "Merlin, they're all going to die of food poisoning or malnutrition without me there."

Severus, who'd witnessed some of my homemaker summer, pulled a vial of antiemetic potion out of somewhere and gave it to me with a wry smile. I swear, if I didn't already love the man, things like this would make me irreparably his. "They managed to survive before you came along."

"On corned beef sandwiches and crisps," I muttered grimly, deciding, yes, the nausea was passing as the potion took effect and I could get to my feet once more. So I did and barefacedly began shrugging out of my grimy-feeling school robes as I searched for my trunk, only to be surprised that everything was already put away. Even my pyjamas were in the drawer were I'd kept them last term. I climbed into the warm, soft bed that I'd begun to think of as my own, and closed my eyes in relief.

It was only a bit later, when Severus was joining me, I thought aloud, "And now I don't have a book or ingredients for Potions, thank you very much."

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I squinted my eyes to read the writing on the back cover of the copy of Advanced Potions-Making Severus had handed me as I gathered my bag for the morning (the advantages of dating a Professor: the copies of the professors' schedules they have lying around), understanding now what he meant when he'd said, "Kindly do not add to it without checking with me first; the same goes for any of the spells you might find in there." I was even tempted to whistle, for seemingly everywhere in the text were notes, comments, and corrections in either his own cramped handwriting or a looser, more curly hand that I assumed was his mother's – why, I don't know, but the whole book screamed that it was something precious to him, and, perhaps, not a little dangerous. Tables and meaningless calculations covered the back flap, but I could see in the corner the words: This Book is the Property of The Half-Blood Prince. That time I could not help myself from snorting, "Pretentious much."

"What's so pretentious?" asked Hermione, letting her monstrously heavy book bag hit the ground as she sat across from me and began to load her plate with toast and eggs.

Ginny answered for me as I closed my text, "Her book." She'd been watching me peruse the book with great interest for the last five minutes.

"Has hell frozen over? Harry is reading a Potions book of her own volition. Besides, I thought you weren't taking Potions."

I did not remind her that, per The Divine Comedy, the deepest parts of hell were an icy wasteland, or that the name I chose to go by was Éléonore, not some computer screw-up, thinking it too early. After last night's strain of emotions, I was feeling tired and headachy, but at least the worst of the food poisoning was past. After classes today, I was going to have to owl Mrs. Weasley and ask her to feed the three at HQ if the Order was to survive at all.

"I wasn't – and then I discovered Slughorn was going to be teaching it, and I suddenly could take it," I shrugged. My plans for my Sixth Year weren't overwhelming: just self-study DADA, Transfiguration, Charms, CoMC, Herbology and now Potions. Not an overwhelming course schedule, but I'd still to figure out how to protect my mind from Voldemort, figure out how to carryout the prophesy so that no more little Muggle-born boys, who should have been sitting somewhere in this hall, excited about his first day of classes and not a little nervous, would have to die; that no more girls no older than me should have to kill their brothers and their sons to keep them safe… I nibbled at my toast, glaring daggers at the eggs, sausage, and anything else that might be the least undercooked and worsen the damage Sirius's cooking had done.

"And you bought the book anyway?" Hermione looked distinctly proud.

Distractedly, as I saw the morning post coming, "Er, no, Severus lent me his old copy."

Hedwig landed with my copy of Smoke and Mirror, as well as my monthly addition of Star and Stave, and I passed her the entire platter of bacon, anxious to get it out of my sight. Without noticing the look my two friends were giving me, I scanned the headlines (Raids in Knoctern Discover Dark Weapons Cache and Stocks Plummet in Wake of YKW's Return) before flipping to the obituaries. It wasn't until I'd confirmed that no one I knew had died did I look up and see Ginny's gapping mouth and Hermione's wide, almost protuberant, look. "What?"

"You…" said the red head faintly.

"I what?" I was confused, that's all I can say. Folding the paper carefully and sticking it into my bag, I regarded their expressions and tried to figure out if I'd been transfigured into something bizarre without my knowledge or my robe had started flashing pink hearts. I found both of these things to be a negative as far as I could tell, I resigned myself to the fact they'd enlighten me, sooner or later, on what was going on that was causing them to look like fish. So, finishing off my toast, I flipped my magazine open to the first page without cosmetic adverts and tried to figure out who the papers had me dating now that I was proved to be a brave, truth-telling, Maquis-leading "Chosen One" rather than just the plain-old rich Girl-Who-Lived and five-time winner of Teen Witch's Most Influential Teen Star award. I think those were on display in the formal dining room, with the Triwizard Vase and a few other random awards Andi had salvaged from the Owl Post's VIP offices, where all the fan mail, presents, and random, non-personal nonsense I'd received over the last fifteen years had been mercifully collecting dust until Andi discovered it. On the opposite wall were commendations Tonks had received in her line of work, which carried fancy titles for the smile act of hexing and capturing people. The night I'd acquired my food poisoning, said commendations had been hopping around in their frames, followed by an intrigued Paracelsus.

I was on page four's "Six Beauty Tips Every Witch Should Know" when Hermione hissed at last: "You've been staying with Professor Snape."

My eyebrow raised itself in what I hoped was a Snapish way, "So what if I have?"

Poor Ginny looked about to hyperventilate. Every time she managed to get her breath under control, she'd sneak a look up at the Head Table, where said professor was now enjoying a blissfully uninterrupted breakfast before having to pass out class schedules, and she'd start hyperventilating again. My Runespoor, having sensed the nearby distress, poked his heads out of my pockets and slithered up Ginny's arm, until Acel was peering in her ear. In his typical way, he decided that singing would be the answer everything. "Here'ssss a little song I wrote; you might want to sing it note-for-note," the middle head began.

"You didn't write it at all, you fool. Now shut up!" Sus snapped.

That didn't stop Acel. "Don't worry, be happy. In every life we have some trouble; but when you worry, you make it double."

"Ooo-oo-hoo-hoo-oo hoo-hoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-ooo," Par sang in the background.

"Don't worry."

"Woo-oo-woo-oo-woo-oo-ooo."

"Why won't you two ever shut up?"

Eyes only now beginning to recede into her skull, "You were sleeping in a professor's rooms for two months…"

"Be happy."

"Woo-oo-oo-oo-ooo."

"Don't worry, be happy."

"You're idiotssss, the both of you!"

"That's where you were last night too!" with sudden realization. "That's why there were only three beds in the dormitory." That was interesting, I had to admit. "Please, please, tell me I'm wrong!"

"Ooo-oo-hoo-hoo-oo hoo-hoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-ooo."

"Don't worry."

"Woo-oo-woo-oo-woo-oo-ooo."

"Be happy."

"Mère! Make them stop it!" demanded the third head. Not wanting to explain what was going on with my three-headed snake now that Ginny seemed able to breathe, I picked him up by his tail and stuffed him in my pocket without a word. With a sigh, I noticed it was getting a little small for him and cast an enlargement charm upon it, and turned back to Hermione. The mumbled protestations of, "Hey!" and "That'sss mean!" could be heard a moment later from with in.

"In 1381, Aldyth Merle-" I began.

But this was all the confirmation that my oldest female friend needed. Voice squeaky, "Please tell me that it's just that his couch is exceedingly comfortable."

The silence in which I considered my answer was not particularly comfortable but, luckily, not long. Oliver, sliding into the seat next to me without noticing a thing wrong, "Hey, Ely." The Hufflepuff Third Year leaned across me, rescued some bacon from the platter Hedwig had been helping herself to, and poured himself a glass of pumpkin juice. "Feeling any better? Remind me never to eat Uncle Sirius's steak-and-kidney pie again."

I pushed my half-finished plate away. "A little. What's up with you, Oliver?"

"Nada mucho. Just wanted to see if you'd seen my Quidditch gloves."

"Decided to try out after all?"

"Yeah – I mean, I'm a Third Year this year, and Summerby isn't that great and all, so I've a fighting chance. "

"Of course you do. After a summer with me, how could you not? I could have sworn I saw them at the bottom of your trunk Saturday night."

"I looked – they weren't even in with my socks."

Pursing my lips, "Try getting one of the older kids to summon them for you. If you can't or they don't show, I'll let you use mine until we can order you a proper pair."

He gave me a Hufflepuff smile and, with a, "Thanks" and a blushing kiss on the cheek, he picked up his glass and took a seat across the aisle with his housemates.

To Hermione, who'd been waiting, "I've read nearly every book on youth law in existence, and I've yet to find any proscription against a student," I searched for the right word, "being involved," I decided at last, "with a professor. With the medieval and provincial laws in the Wizarding world, the statutes regarding 'marriageable ages,' 'age of consent,' and likewise, you'll soon find that, in turns, they are both antiquated and forward thinking. Until 1283, witches could marry at twelve and wizards at fourteen; afterwards, it became fourteen and seventeen respectively, with an age of consent established as thirteen-and-a-half for girls and fifteen for boys – and it's not changed since, except for an addendum that adds carnal relations between witches and wizards of twelve and fifteen permissible, so long as it is not per outside influence, i.e., brothels, strip clubs, et cetera. And yet, in 1548, laws were passed allowing same-sex marriage, (on the condition that, if either was Head of a House, there must be provided an heir to said House, either through adoption or a close relative, in his or her will) and homosexual age of consent at seventeen across the board. While some certain laws have been slightly modified since, no law has ever been passed – or even suggested – that would forbid student-teacher relations, provided that both are of age." Then, in retrospect, "Which I am."

Ginny just looked like she'd come from a Divs class where Trelawney had been burning something decidedly other than incense, whereas Hermione gave a thoughtful look at me and said nothing for a long time, but rather ate her eggs very slowly. I thought the whole issue dropped, and wished McGonagall would just pass out the schedules already, because I wanted to get out of here before either of my friends thought of anything else, or Ron arrived and could be filled in on the details. Luckily, she was only one or two seats down, trying to get Neville to take Charms instead of Transfiguration despite what his Grandmother wanted. Hermione was quickly cleared a few minutes later for all her classes; a quick comment to McGonagall got my classes like a wanted. It wouldn't be too bad this year. After all, if I wasn't taking Severus's DADA, then I'd only have Slughorn's Potions after lunch to deal with. I'd never have more than two on the same day, and only once go straight from one to the other – CoMC to Herbology on Thursdays. After this perusal, I slipped it to into my bag and stood. "See you at Potions," I told Hermione, and pulled my toothpick-sized Firebolt from Paracelsus's pocket (which contained, among my Runespoor's other toys, a piece of string, three mix-matched dice, and miniature statue of a red-hated gnome) and decided I'd fly for a bit, since I didn't have any classes to go to or homework to do. 'Sides, if I was going to be Quidditch Captain, I might as well be practiced after the summer.

I did not notice Draco – the Head of the Malfoy, thanks to me – stride up the space between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff's tables with Crabbe and Goyle (Jrs.) at flank until he was almost on me. His wand was in his hand, and the look on his face was more sullen and enraged than I'd ever been privileged to see it before.

For some reason – maybe temporary insanity was a symptom of food poisoning – I tried to be cordial. "Hello, Draco." I was sorely tempted, even, to use 'wotcher' like our cousin Tonks does, but I thought straying away from the subject of family would be the best for all involved.

Loudly and, sadly, frostily, "You killed my father," (I almost expected him to continue, "Prepare to die." Almost), "you bitch."

What is it with this family and that word? Still, I felt faintly sick at the memory. "Please, people are trying to eat here." The clammy, sticky feeling of sickness and blood washed over me

"Bitch," he said again. People were starting to look over at us now, not just at Gryffindor and Hufflepuff's tables, but at Ravenclaw and Slytherin too. The professors, for the moment, seemed blissfully ignorant of it all, "you think you can just kill my father without retaliation?"

"To be fair, he tried to kill me first."

Lowly, so I doubted anyone besides myself and Ginny, who was right behind me now, "And why shouldn't he have killed you, half-blood whore? You're nothing – nothing – special, just another uppity bitch that needs to be put back into her place."

I held Ginny back as she started forward. Calmly, and at a normal tone, "I am going to curse you if you don't start backing away slowly now." Surely the teachers had to know by now any interaction I had with Malfoy was bound to lead to trouble? Wasn't there some alarm ringing at the Head Table or the Headmaster's Office, warning them of the impending destruction of school property and body parts?

He didn't move accept to wave his wand arm. Not hesitating, I flicked a scutum shield around me and cast, "Caecio," the Blinding Spell, upon him. His minions, not thinking of magic, rushed towards me, but stunners dealt with them. "I've no quarrel with you!" I told him, vociferously. Blindly, he cast a charm in my direction that was reflected away by my shield; he took advantage, though, of my momentary distraction to perform the counter-curse that restored his sight, and take another step towards me.

"It took them three days to collect all the parts of him to return to us!"

I grimaced at that and went slightly pale. I'd told him people were eating. "He was a Death Eater-!"

"No proof-"

Er, how about the Death Eater robes he was wearing? the Death Eater mask? That his body was found in the presence of other Death Eaters? "Whatever you say, Malfoy-" A writhing, electric-blue curse flew my way. I tried a disarming curse, but he held onto his wand still. It caught sight of Severus, McGonagall, and others advancing towards us. I'd not do anything drastic, I promised myself. They could handle him, make him pay… "Is your whole family stupid or something?" … I allowed myself a Tarantallegra as I ducked out of the way of a spell of his, not trusting even my shield to what he might send my way now. "Was it your plan just to kill me in the great hall, in front of all these people? No subtly at all – I thought Snakes were supposed to be cunning," (from my pocket came a muffled, "We are," from one head and an, "Ooo-oo-hoo-hoo-oo hoo-hoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-ooo," from another), "but I guess not."

McGonagall got to us first: "What in Merlin's name is going on here?"

Draco inserted, "Potter attacked me, Professor," as Severus and Sinistra joined us, followed a moment later by Sprout and an out-of-breath Flitwick. I rolled my eyes and, resignedly, lowered my shield charm.

"And I suppose she was just waiting here, at her table, for you to pass by, when yours is clear across the hall?"

Quietly, "I can explain," though I'd rather not do it here. The eyes of the professors and everyone interested turn on me, but I can't see them. I feel them, in a way a girl who is used to being stared at for one thing or another all her life can feel them. "Malfoy is attempting to challenge me to a duel for killing his father last June. However," I continued, "he is forgetting that, as both of us are not of age, and therefore cannot, legally, have an honour duel. Though," I mused, shifting my hold on my back pack, "with the year-and-a-day law and the ninety-day execution period, if he should wish to challenge me on the fifth of June next for a duel to take place in August, per say, he could do so if he got the courts to rule that it was not voluntary manslaughter but murder one… which might be difficult, considering Arietis Caudwell has filled an attempted murder in the first charge on Lucius Malfoy's estate…"

The Deputy Headmistress was, sadly, having none of it. "There will be no more talk of duels in the great hall."

"Aye, Capitaine," I smiled at them all, pulled out my toothpick-broom again, and marched out of the hall, determined to pretend the whole thing never happened as I flew.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

Wrapped tightly around the handle of my broom, Paracelsus was starting to get on my nerves now that'd I'd slowed enough for the wind not to carrying his hisses away. Still flying, even with a singing three-headed snake, it relaxing. Helps you forget that the son of the guy you murdered, who-happens to be your classmate and self-proclaimed archnemisis tried to attack you doing your attempt at breakfast and things like that.

"Don't worry, don't worry, don't do it."

"Ooo-oo-hoo-hoo-oo hoo-hoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-ooo,"

"Isss there a more annoying song you can sing?"

"Be happy. Put a smile on your face. Don't bring everybody down."

"Woo-oo-woo-oo-woo-oo-ooo."

"Don't worry. It will soon passss, whatever it isss."

"Ooo-oo-hoo-hoo-oo hoo-hoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-ooo,"

Sus was glaring daggers back at me for not stopping this long before. I barely noticed, for, as I did a finally loop, I noticed a crop of lurid pink hair walking towards the stands. "What about that one that one that wasss all over the Muggle noise-boxesss at the market, or-?"

But poor Sus never got a chance to finish is thought, for Acel and Par exchanged glances (well, as best as Acel ever looked at someone) and changed songs so fast it was dizzying. So, as I gently brought the Firebolt, the melody changed from '80s one-hit-wonders to a British pop hit that had indeed been tormenting me every time I went grocery shopping in the Muggle world this summer:

"Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want."

"So tell me what you want, what you really, really want."

"Polyxena and Glykon!" Sus cursed. "I want earplugssss for Christmassss."

"I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really, really, really wanna zigazig ha."

"So here'sss a story from A to Z, you wanna get with me you gotta listen carefully."

"We got Em in the place who likesss it in your face."

"We got G like MC who likesss it on an."

When I was about three feet from the ground, the critic continued: "That doesn't even make any sense!" as I called out to Tonks, who was now waving at me.

"Wotcher, Éléonore!" she called as I circled to the ground, "You're a brave one, flying after Sirius's cooking. I've spent all morning taking anti-nausea potions like they were jell-o shooters." She shot bleary glance at me and, in her wise and worldly way, informed me, "Never, ever, do green jell-o shooters. They tell you they're apple, but, inevitably, they're lime, and who likes lime jell-o?"

I laughed. "Have you gotten any sleep since Saturday?"

"A little – I finally got to sleep with Remus, y'know-" My hands instantly clasped my ears, and I fell the last few feet to the ground, my Firebolt landing right in my face. None of this deterred Paracelsus or, sadly, Tonks, who, much experienced with clumsiness, pulled me and my broom to our feet. "He was conked out in the bathtub, and I was on a nest of towels on the bathroom floor. Now that we've slept the same night in the same room, more or less, I just have to convince him its okay to sleep with me. I'll have to do that when I get relieved. Remus should be finished locking up all the food and cooking implements by then – that's what he was doing when I left, anyway. I'm 'guarding' Hogsmeade, y'know, with Proudfoot, Savage, and Dawlish, but I don't think Dawlish, at least, believes it's in danger… He keeps on showing up late and popping out early… Anyway, I saw you flying and couldn't resist. Never seen you fly before, y'know. Sirius and Remus are right: you really are quite good."

"Merlin, Tonks!"

"I'm not saying it to butter you up, it's the truth-"

I sputtered at her and her pink hair, "No, I mean, I don't want to hear about your sex life, or Remus's, or Sirius's, or- or, I dunno, any one else's." I mean, it was like thinking of my parents having sex, and they'd been dead almost fifteen years.

Meanwhile, still wrapped around my broom handle, Acel continued, "Easy V doesn't come for free, she'sss a real lady."

"And assss for me, you'll see, slam your body down and wind it all around," Par sang, before, as one, "Slam your body down and wind it all around."

"Oh," I hissed at them in exasperation, "go catch Ari a beetle or something."

Par pouted, "Fine then."

"Trample our artistic expression," he slithered off towards the lake.

"Kill me now," the last head lamented, dragging behind.

To Tonks, "He was singing Spice Girls."

She shuddered appreciatively, her sunshine yellow shirt, proclaiming the superiority of a band called The Atomic Guillotine, saying all that was needed about her own musical tastes. Then, flopping gracelessly on the grass where I'd fallen, "So, anyway, I heard from Fleur today why she and Bill missed your party Saturday."

I joined her more tenderly, feeling slightly bruised. "Really?"

"Yeah. Apparently Bill took her to some five star restaurant in the wizarding section of Edinburgh and proposed to her."

"What?"

"Oh yes, apparently Molly's far from thrilled."

"Of course…"

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

I'd been talking with Tonks so long, I was nearly late for Potions.

Hermione, who reminded me of Sus or Edes sometimes, "Where have you been?"

"Yeah, Harry," said Ron as I pulled out Severus's textbook and the ingredients he'd stocked me with. The set wasn't the basic stuff I'd used before, which was now collecting dust in my room at HQ, but appeared to me to be several of the knives that I'd replaced for him at Christmas and similar – things that he must have used for ages and were, while not quite so exorbitantly, expensive, Potions Master's tools. Not sure whether this was faith in my abilities, faith that I could improve my dismal abilities (though I had gotten an E, so I must have learned something throughout the years other then what an irritating bastard Severus could be when he felt like it which was, admittedly, most the time), or because this was the stuff he'd be most okay with me ruining, I set it out carefully. Hogwarts's resident genius noticed that they weren't my normal things – of course – but seemed hesitant to question me on this with Ron so nearby. "You weren't in Snape's DADA, or lunch."

"I ran into Tonks on the pitch, and neither of us was feeling all that well still after Sirius's cooking. If your mother doesn't take pity on them, I don't know what they'll do. All Sirius can cook well is breakfast, but he hates eating it more than once a day… and the others, well, its not worth mentioning. Oh, and your brother got engaged."

As he had five brothers, at least three of them with steady girlfriends, this required some clarification, "Which one?"

"Bill. Your mother is trying to talk him out of it. So, how was Defence?"

"Odd," said Hermione at some length. "Professor Snape clearly knows what he's doing, but…"

"He can be a bit snapish?"

"You're lucky to be doing self-study again, mate. You'd think he'd be happy he finally has job." Ron sighed, "At least he'll be gone next year, the curse and all."

My eyebrows went a little too high for normal, disinterested interest. "Curse?"

"Well, you know." I think he expected me to, "Think about it – we've had Quirrel, Lockhart, Lupin, fake Moody, Umbridge, and now Snape. The Twins had some chick named Grimes their First Year, and a guy named Harper their Second." He started ticking off his fingers, scrunching up his face to think, "Bill's first two were Kendra Witney and a chap called Soxael from Palestine – he was the reason Bill went into curse-breaking in the first place. Then, let's see… Rodgers, McNamee… Strangeglove… and Fitzpatrick. There's not been a Defence teacher that's lasted more than two terms. Witney got married, I remember; she doesn't live too far away from The Burrow, actually, now…. Soxael went on a spirit journey… Strangeglove had a heart attack during the Sixth Year exams when somebody's boggart got loose and retired… And, well you get the picture."

A thrill of worry ran through me. Ron was right, and I'd not thought about it until now, though, by rights, I should have been panicking about it last night… I mean, Remus had "retired" and Umbridge was "called back" to the MoM in disgrace, but Lockhart had lost his memory and the other two were dead, both largely because of me. What would happen to Severus?

No. Curses on jobs were just stupid. On places, yes. On families – who could forget House Atreides? – yes. But on a job? It was too unstable; there was no common thread. Places had foundations; families had blood ties. You'd have to be very powerful to successfully curse a job, and who could feel so strongly about a job for that?

Slughorn, who struck me in the light of his bubbling potions to be slightly bulbous, trying and not entirely succeeding at looking like favourite royal advisor, came out of the storeroom then. Perhaps if his tum was bit less round or his hair more white, he might have succeeded. "Now then, now then, now then," he said. "Scales out, everyone, and potions kits, and don't forget your copies of Advanced Potion-Making…"

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

That night I was sprawled on my stomach in front of the light-giving fire, the heavy texts On Warding the Schizoaffective; The Squib's Guide to Warding: Protecting Your Home and Assets from Neighbours, Trespassers, and Mum, and Tmesis of the Mind when Severus returned from one of the professor's meetings. I turned down the radio, to which Par and Acel were singing along to The Atomic Guillotine's latest ("(Put that Wand Away) Drinks and Guitars Don't Mean Anything") and asked them to shush for a moment. "Hey, Severus."

"How's it coming along?" the Potions Master asked, unbuttoning his robe and moving towards the liquor cabinet.

… I'd stay here with you all night, girl, if it weren't for the old lady's chain

I just came out here tonight to sing my song and drink away my pain…

"I think I've finally got a formula I'm willing to give a try. That kind of day, huh?"

"Indeed."

"Well, you know, without the threat of their potions blowing up in their faces, kids tend to be a bit more unruly… I say try putting a something that you can set to spark in their faces every time they annoy you."

…My lady, she's a troll, but don't let that worry your sweet head; me and you

We can have some old-fashioned fun tonight and part ways when we're through…

He gave me a wry smile and poured himself a glass of something warm and amber looking. "Want anything?" I shook my head. He came to sit next to me, leaning against the sofa beside me and picked up one of my notebooks. After a moment, "It looks sound enough. It'll take some time though, and I don't have this amount of mercury on hand."

"I figured that…" I sighed and looked up at him, rolling onto my side. Though it was only seven or eight – I couldn't see the clock on the mantle – I was already in the long Cannons shirt I wore to bed and was too hot to have bothered with the pyjama bottoms. That and I lived for moments like this one, where his eyes, however serious he was about whatever he was saying, would follow the line of my legs… "Is the Defence position really cursed?"

Snorting, "Where'd you hear that?" but his eyes were, yes, looking where I'd wished them. I suppose I make it sound that, since June, we've been hoping each other like rabbits. It's not really like that – I mean, sure we snog and have sex and all that, but it's not the central thing. We talk; we enjoy each other's company. If sex was what this was all about, I could have chosen an easier, more randy target anywhere in school that I could have told my friends about with the hope of them understanding.

…Sure, I'll play my guitar and sing you my song and, before long

We'll be sitting real close, little girl, and I'll put away my ring

But, when the night's done, we've had our fun and we'll go back where we belong

Just put that wand away, 'cause fizzy drinks and guitars don't mean anything…

"Well, no one's stayed in the position for more than two terms in over a decade."

"That doesn't mean it's cursed."

I flushed a little. "I worry about you, okay?" To is eyes' interest, though the rest of him tried not to show it, I reddened all over.

"You worry about me – I'm just a spy; your the one who can't go a day without getting into some sort of trouble."

"That business with Malfoy wasn't my fault. Well, maybe it was just a little – I did kill Senior – but I didn't ask him to try and attack me in the middle of breakfast!"

"I never said it was," he said calmly, laying aside the notebook he was still holding and putting down his glass of whatever. "You did nothing wrong."

Quite small, "Didn't I?"

"Killing in self-defence – they'd have killed you if you hadn't, and I for one wouldn't want that, not to mention all your fans."

"It's still killing."

…If we are real quiet in this back room, maybe we can meet here next time

Oh, forget your man tonight, girl, 'cause our love, it's not a crime…

He leaned down to kiss me, and I met his lips gladly. They tasked like amber; his breath of Amortentia's sweet mint. "Is that what's been bugging you all summer?"

If flushed deeper now. I thought I'd hidden it well. He was a spy. "You noticed?"

"It wasn't hard to miss." Maybe not for a spy. It was funny, at HQ, nobody seemed to notice anything odd. But the Caudwells were wrapped up in their grief, Tonks and Remus with each other, and Sirius had always been in his own little world. Maybe that was understandable. Severus was the only one who seemed to notice that things weren't all peachy keen with me.

"Well, it wasn't that." Severus's eyebrow rose. "Well, mostly wasn't that."

"."

His eyebrow went up further, and he backed away a little. "Pardon?" I wished he wouldn't. The Amortentia had smelled so nice, so much like him, that, now that the real thing was before me, I'd much rather be working on undoing his belt buckle than on making my thoughts coherent for once.

"Er… I have homicidal fantasies about getting rid of my aunt and uncle and am worried that I'll turn out like Voldemort. I mean, Riddle stopped his attacks on Muggle-borns in the hopes that he wouldn't have to go to back the orphanage he was raised in…" I began to fall into myself, the way I had the night before,

…Just put that wand away, 'cause fruity drinks and guitars don't mean anything

In places like these, oh girl, where everyone's looking for somebody new

To drink to dream to hope to forget with in a guitar-spelled dream

'Cause, in bars like these, honey, drinks and guitars aren't what they seem…

Severus pulled me close to him then, gripping me by the shoulders, and lifted up my face to meet his dark black eyes. Roughly, hoarsely, huskily – like the words were coming from somewhere from deep inside of him that burned his throat as they escaped the Tartaros within him, and meant something more than what they were, - vehemently, "Never, ever think that, Éléonore. Never! You are nothing like him, nothing at all. The Dark Lord – he thrives off of others' misfortunes, revels in pain and suffering. You, Éléonore, the fact that you feel this pain, the fact that you don't want to turn out like him – these things make you human. If you could just kill Lucius without a second thought, you wouldn't be the woman I love, but another heartless, empty Bellatrix Lestrange, and one of those in the world is more than enough. You are so kind and caring, smart and driven, brave and understated – I can't understand how the Hat could put you in any one house; you embody them all."

Shifting a little until I straddled him more comfortably (though my eyes never left his coal-coloured eyes, so fiery with passion I'd never seen until I let myself see the person that hid so deeply underneath his tarnished surface), I tried to deny everything that he said. "But I cruciated Bellatrix – I held her under for like two minutes, at least, and she screamed in pain and, when I was done, she didn't say anything at all, just moaned… And Voldemort just clapped behind me, telling me how good I was…"

"Hate is human too. You can't be able to love without being able to hate as well."

I don't think he got it, and tried with great fervour to make him understand. "But it wasn't her I hated – it was me, Severus. I'm a terrible person! I awful, terrible, wretched person! I'm taken away my classmates' fathers! I allowed the bastard's master to come back in the first place! I didn't die fifteen years ago when I should hav-"

"If you think that, you are truly mad, Éléonore."

"Then I'm mad! I what right have I to be happy, here with you, to love you like I do, when I'm directly responsible for so much pain and misery?"

"You've the most right in the world." He kissed me fiercely then, with all the blazing passion I saw in his eyes, and I kissed him back deeply. His mouth, though familiar, held new surprises for me every time I traced its outline with my own, probing its depths with my tongue… He broke away all too soon, planting kisses down my neck while one hand held me tightly to him, the other struggling to remove the Cannons' shirt. I would have helped him, but I was too busy dealing with all the annoying buttons he insisted on wearing. There had to be a spell for unfastening them, and for the undoing of the belt buckle. Admittedly, though, my actions would have gone quicker if I wasn't tracing the outline of his flesh with my fingertips every third or fourth button…

…It's all just cheep liquor, and the misses never comes

The only thing that's real to me is the bartender, girl, and Billie's drums…

…At length, we managed to get properly disrobed, and nibbled at the tender flesh of my ear as I moaned in pleasure, both from this and the hand that was fondling me in places-that-should-not-be-mentioned-in-public. "Sev'rus," I managed at great length, burning with desire for him and alive in the scent of him, "promise me you won't die on me?"

The professor (who, per his Lion morals, was not mine) answered with a chuckled that reverberated through his chest and into mine, "I'll try."

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

Two weeks later, after a particularly exhaustive day of Quidditch try-outs (at which, to my horror, several of what Hermione was rapidly beginning to call my "potential suitors," had shown up, including the non-Gryffindor ones), you'd have thought Severus would have been kind enough to give me detention, so as to get me out of the Slug Club dinner that evening. Not so, though, even though I rather begged him to.

Not that I had particularly anything against Slughorn. He was just so exhausting. And I was exhausted. Really. This second bout of food poisoning had been hard on me, and I'd been unable to keep much down for the first week of school beyond toast. Now that the middle of September was upon us, I was feeling better, though a bit of a fatigue and a touch of headache lingered.

Forced into going, I used the opportunity to break out one of the outfits Fleur had "assembled" for me ages ago, and made my way there, surprised to find myself relatively early, with few other guests, Cormac McLaggen and Zacharias Smith among them. Just dandy. I love spending the evening sitting with a pompous jerk I denied the position of Keeper just this morning and a pompous jerk who, really, by the weight of his ego shouldn't be able to walk about. I could be in detention with Ron (I've no idea what he did to deserve it this time), embowelling horned toads, but noooooo, Severus has to have weird morals on giving such blissful punishments to the one he's sleeping with…

"Ely, m'girl," Slughorn said not seconds after I entered the room, "Come over here and meet Gwenog – you've heard of Gwenog Jones, Captain of the Holyhead Harpies, haven't you, Ely?"

"Ely," seemed to be my new nickname as far as people like oh, Dung, Oliver, and now Slughorn were concerned. While better than "Harry," I still preferred "Éléonore," but figured one battle at a time was key to success at any. So, giving Slughorn an indulgent smile – the only kind of smile it's possible to give collectors like him; I would have given the same if he'd been touring me through his wine cellars or showing me his collection of beetles – I went over.

Gwenog was a tall and severe woman of twenty-eight, with large shoulders, visible muscles, and tightly cropped dark hair that seemed to be moving even in this windless room. Her smile, while generous as well, was a geniality born more of appreciation and respect then of pure tolerance – she, unlike me (seeming to considered be a "self-made woman" in Slugy's eyes, which is to say, I was famous before I met him), owed a great deal to this man. "Of course, sir. How could anyone who knows anything about Quidditch not?"

Affably, "Of course, of course. I knew she was a right talent the first time I saw her fly, her Second Year, and I said to myself then, 'Horace, that one's going to go far,' and right-o… And, Gwenog, you, of course, know Éléonore Black Potter? As inventive a potioner as her mother – and is up for an Order of Merlin, Second Class." I tightened my smile. I, along with Sirius, Remus, Tonks, and the late Ephraim Cauldwell were all nominated by Ari (which is to say, through a petition Ari coaxed and cajoled five hundred or so people to sign, forcing the MoM, under Rufus Scrimgeour's new management, to take her nomination seriously) in her media blitz. She and Severus, by rights, should have been nominated as well, but Ari refused any recognition for herself, and Victor Talbot had been forced to stun her the last time he'd been able to bring her home just to get her to come at all, and Severus, of course, was a spy and not supposed to have been there at all. "Youngest person ever to be nominated for an Order of Merlin," he continued like a proud uncle. "But enough of that. Gwenog here was coming up this morning and saw your practice, and I promised her I'd introduce you. I'll let you two talk Quidditch – I was always hopeless at it."

"O Slugy, that's not true at all."

He jovially clapped us both on the back and moved the next guest, ignoring the glowering McLaggen, who, despite his dear Uncle Tiberius and his late, great (and very rich) Uncle Marcellus (Mrs. Zabini's second husband, a Potions Master who managed to become poisoned by noxious gas in a tragic storeroom accident after the couple had been married four years), had not made the team.

And so I made small talk with the captain of the Holyhead Harpies, who seemed to think I was the celebrity here. It was kind of interesting, even if her take on Quidditch was a little violent for my tastes. It was kind of weird, though, as I was placed on Slughorn's left, Gwenog on his right, for I noticed as the meal went on that, while Slugy was offering the two of us (and occasionally Blaise, product of Mrs. Zabini's third marriage, this one to an Italian who made millions in the opera business there, who sat on my other side) the best cuts of whatever the current course was, seconds and thirds, topping off our glasses, and generally behaving in a way that he was not to the others. I don't they even noticed it, or that I would have if I didn't keep having to tell him that I didn't want any more wine, I'd stick to water.

I think I could have enjoyed myself if it wasn't for one thing. Well, no, two. The other was that I'd left Paracelsus with Archimedes and I was very worried what trouble the Runespoor and the statue were getting up to, most of it involving gambling or the tormenting of caretaker's cats. The main worry was this:

While Gwenog and I were talking before dinner, she was telling me about the Harpies' preseason training. She felt the Chasers were on form, the Keeper excellent, and the Seeker the best money could buy. The problem, however, was with her fellow Beater.

"…we were bloody brilliant last season, the pair of us – been together since '85, when she made the House team; peanut butter and jelly, we are, right old fish and chips – and were only at the top of our game. I figured just whip Gertrude, the new Chaser, into shape, show her what it means to be a Harpy, and we'd have a right old chance at Nationals, maybe even making the Cup playoffs. But what happens? Irina goes and gets herself up the pole – doesn't even know who the father is, the right old bloody idiot. I've got no problem with the girls sleeping with the fans," though, or so the tabloids claimed, she did take issue with them sleeping with the male members of their fan base, "and I understand that accidents happen, no contraceptive potion is perfect, but, Merlin, she can play in October's match against the Arrows if she's carrying a Quaffle under her shirt? And, the nerve of her, she won't get rid of it. Not even that, she wants to take a few years off to raise the thing. So there go our chances for Nationals for a few years, until I can get one of the second-stringers trained up…" and, from there, she went on to talk about training Beaters, which was handy, considering Fred and George were pre-trained and the one's I've got to replace them are nowhere near as brilliant.

Still, it was with one ear I listened to her suggestions and responded with the appropriate, "Yes," "Of course," "Really now?" and the occasional, "I never thought of that before," but with her other ear and the rest of her available body, my mind realized one thing that, while seemingly obvious, isn't if you've been preoccupied with other things like, say, one of your fellow classmates attacking you in Potions over you killing his father and torturing his aunt or, say, being maimed by a bicorn in CoMC, or, of course, going to meetings in the Headmaster's office to learn how Riddle was conceived: I've not (as my former roommates, Lavender and Parvati might say) "trolled for any vampires" since OWLS had been sent.

Which means, for those of you without a calendar, that today was 14 September, and said letters had arrived, officially, 13 July.

Which means, in case anyone can't count, that my "Quidditch pitch" hasn't been "closed due to rain" in two months.

Which means (my mind finally landed on this during dessert, which I was fighting with every inch of willpower I had not to rush out of the room) that my food poisoning last week might not have been just food poisoning, that my exhaustion might be a sign of something more than needing more sleep…

Which means…

I'm not Sophie of Mecklenburg-Güstrow. I'm just a sixteen-year-old girl with an adoptive father and a lover who don't get along. I'm still in school, for Merlin's sake! I can't be you-know – not that it's physically impossible, but I've been taking the prophylactic potions like lime jell-o shooters. Maybe I just missed the "reassertion of my womanhood" last month because of overwork and malnutrition. Yeah, that's probably it. Even though I was better fed, even at Azkaban South, then I ever have been over the summer, and, though I was doing a lot, I could always break when I felt tired and had a high work-tolerance from my years as my aunt's house elf. Maybe it was something good, like cancer. Cancer would explain the extravagant delay of the "Russian train" and there'd be no terribly awful part where I get to tell Sirius (and everybody else) that I'm… I'm…

Oh Herne and Hecate, I can't even think it…

What if I am, though? What am I going to do? What will I do if I am? What should I even do if I turn out to actually be…?

Oh God and Merlin, I can't even think straight…

Should I rid myself of it, if I am? Do I want to? Should I tell Severus if I do want to and that's what I end up doing? Or do I want to keep it, if I am? Is that what I want? What do I tell people? Do I care what they think at all? But what do I do – I'm only a Sixth Year. How do I… how do I… go about caring for one if that's what turns out to be what's happening here and I chose to keep it? How would Severus take that? What would he do? Sure, I have a bracelet he gave me with lines from Ovid's Amores from last Christmas and a locket he gave me for my birthday, ovular and studded with a ring of tiny diamonds surrounding a central pearl, and quote from Carmina Burana inside, but what does that mean?

Ama me fideliter

fidem meam nota de corde totaliter

et ex mente tota

I'm sooo sure he meant, when he inscribed

Love me faithfully

taking heed of my loyalty, with all your heart

with all your mind

into the silver he fully meant to stand by me if I ever happened to get unwillingly and unwittingly storked me… Yeah, right. After all, I'm just a sixteen-year-old student, despite one that he doesn't teach. His bizarre morality would just kick into overdrive so badly that he'd either team up with Sirius to make me prioress of some place like St. Bernard's or Quedlinburg Abby, like Anna Amelia of Prussia. Or maybe he'll just send me back to the Tower and ignore me, wanting to forget his peccatum… I can just see him now, going penitently to Dumbledore, who is sitting old and wise behind his desk, some ancient priest in his star-and-moon robes and flowing white beard, on his hands and knees, saying, "Ignosce mihi, Magister, quia peccavi," and leaving me to do whatever I decide to do, forgetting our love and our (possible) life together… It seems impossible to me that I could, if I am, have both. I don't know what I'm going to do.

As soon as I dessert is over, I pled my farewells to Slughorn and Gwenog, claiming exorbitant amounts of homework, and with the greatest stealth possible – which is to say, somehow managing to avoid every prefect, professor, and random walker-by in the halls – and duck into the hospital wing, not caring if it's close to the nurse's closing time.

"Why, Miss Potter," Madam Pomprey joked as I entered the room and flung myself down on a bed near the windows that'd been labelled all but mine over the years, "I've not seen you here so far this term – two weeks, that's got to be a record for you."

"Madam Pomprey, can you… can you please…?"

"What is it child?" she asks concerned now, dropping her cheery manner for one of concern as she sits beside me on the bed. I'm her favourite patient. None have seen her as often as I have… Familiarity breeds friendship, I suppose.

"Do you have a… test or something…" just spit it out already. I can do it. I am a brave Gryffindor. I saved the Stone from Quirell-mort. I rescued Ginny from Slytherin's monster. I out-emotion-ed a flock of Dementors and saved Sirius's and my past-self's soul. I came out of the Triwizard Tournament alive, winning it through a combination of chance and stay-alive-ery. I led an underground Maquis movement, helped to oust Umbridge, and outwitted Voldemort's cunning plan to get the prophesy and kill me. I had killed men. I had tortured a torturer. I had helped to found a media campaign. I loved a spy. I could do this. These were only words – dangerous, terrible words, yes, but I would not die of them. I would not let myself. "I think I'm pregnant."


	20. In Which The Banns are Called

Sunday night, I took a shower.

I had not seen Severus since the night before, but the clothes press was hanging open when I returned from Old Slugy's party and my unplanned stop at the hospital wing. I knew he'd returned though, for I had spent the better part of the day sitting on the roof of the astronomy tower staring out over the expansive forest and endless sky that seemed to both cradle me and exert upon me the magnitude of my own existence, I found the robes I had reason to fear so much stained and bloodied across our bed. He was no where to be found, so I assumed he'd been dragged to the hospital wing. I would not go looking for him there, however much I worried; I avoided places like that if at all possible. McGonagall would know to find me if it was necessary, though why she'd look to find me on the roof of the astronomy tower I didn't bother informing myself.

On the astronomy tower, it was hard to believe that an All Hollow's Day nearly sixteen years ago, a prophesy was made regarding my fate. It's hard to believe, from this distance, that anything I do can possibly matter. I am an ant, a dust mote in the universe, tiny and unimportant. And yet… a nargle flaps its wings in Cambuluc, and on the other side of the world, there's a hurricane. I am minute, miniature, irrelevant to the world… But, from this great height, I am as if a giant; it is the world, not I, that is minuscule. I am fated. My life irrevocably was bound to one Tom Marvolo Riddle, aka Lord Voldemort, before I was even more than a collection of cells in my mother's womb. I am large, I am great – The Chosen One, bound by prophesy and my own desire to destroy my parents' killer or be killed by him – and a begetter of things. I am powerful. I can change the world.

But creating the currents or being moved it them, it does not change the fact that this thing called life is something that happens while you're too busy planning other things. Because the simple fact of the matter was, yes, I was "with child." Something – someone, half Severus and half me, was growing inside of me, to appear suddenly in seven months and change my life irrevocably. Because, you see, even if I acknowledged that it wasn't right to bring another life into this world, filled with war and Darkness that never ceased, wherein the child was likely to loose at least one parent, at least one member of the extended family I had acquired of blood-traitor cousins, an ex-con adoptive father, a lawyer and her children… The fact was, however, that, when I sat atop the roof of the highest tower in the castle, I tried to think about the logical choice of actions – asking Madam Pomprey to help me get rid of it, – I couldn't. I tried to imagine drinking the potion and shuddering at more than just the taste as it felt it course into me, tried to imagine without a horrified trembling it being pulled apart in my womb, torn into a thousand tiny, bloody pieces and dripping from my body; tried to even imagine going through with it, not ever telling what I'd done until, maybe one day, if we somehow managed to survive and he still loved me, telling him on my death bed that we'd another child, a little baby I'd gotten rid of when I was sixteen because I was too afraid to bring a child into this world of suffering and hate (even if, like he had told me, hate was a human emotion and thus worth cherishing and, so I supposed, was suffering too) and too afraid one or the other of us would die and too afraid that I would be sent away and forgotten because, for some reason, the contraceptive potions I'd been given had not worked…

I tried and I couldn't. No, instead my hands made that automatic, instinctual cupping motion around my belly, where beneath the flesh something else, something not me but part of me was growing, and decided almost before the words formed in my head: I was going to keep it. I was going to give birth to this thing inside of me and raise it as I'd done Paracelsus (hopefully better), love it, and watch it grow and reach the age I was at how, and fall in love, and do everything for it that my parents had been unable to do for me. After everything that fate has put me through and still continues to throw at me, aren't I owed some sort of happiness as compensation? Don't I deserve happiness?

And this baby, though I'd not known it until I had it in me, would make me very happy. A gift of life to make up for all those I'd taken…

Oh, Merlin, that sparked a thought in me that I had months – until late March actually – to think about: baby names.

It was at that point I climbed down from the roof and, thinking I'd have to acquire a book of French baby names, headed towards the dungeons. About the fourth floor, I ran into Oliver, who was overjoyed for the first time in months, caring two large boxes under his arms. "Ely! Guess what!" he cried from the stairs a little below me, making his way awkwardly to me, setting the boxes down when he stopped.

Ever hopeful it was something that didn't involve me, "They're sending Umbridge to Azkaban for taking inappropriate liberties with a bowl of tapioca?"

"No, silly. I owled Mum about trying out for the team, and owled me back!" That was a surprise given her current state of mind. Could this mean that she was beginning to get better? "Not only that, she sent me a whole set of new Quidditch things and probably some new manga for Alycone," he inclined his head towards the more shoebox-shaped box. "Hey, I was going to give it to her at dinner, but could you mind running it up to her common room for me? I would, you know, but… Only if you're going that way, of course."

I smiled at the boy. Ah, thirteen. Fourteen next month. The wonderful years of puberty and social awkwardness, I thought in a way that took me a moment to remember that I was only sixteen myself. "Sure. Wanna walk with me?" He instantly brightened. Merlin knew what I would do if this turned out to be the early signs of a crush. Especially when he found out…

I blocked that thought out of my mind and accepted the box from him. "When do the 'Puff's have tryouts anyway? They weren't on the list yet when I booked the pitch." Oh, the advantages of being Quidditch Captain. God, Quidditch, I'd not even thought about what I'd do about that. With how tiny I was naturally, I probably could fly for another two or three months, but did I want to risk bludgers? I'd have to hold another tryout for Seeker, to replace me, but the only decent one was Ginny, and she made a far better Chaser… I'd have to think on that.

"Saturday. Cadwaller is a good captain; he's just the type who puts the 'pro' in procrastination. He's already behind on his homework; seems to think that Snape is giving the Seventh Years so much homework as some sort of personal vendetta against them…" I doubted that. Severus was a hard teacher, yes, but after six years of transitory and oft (non-spying) Death Eater DADA teachers, there was much to be taught to those who'd managed to make it that far, and, for Seventh Years at least, not much time to do it in.

Still, it was to my thoughts, mostly, I listened to on the way to the tower I'd so little visited. A couple of corridors from the Fat Lady, I bid him farewell, only to realize as I got there that I'd no idea what the password might be.

Par, from a hole nearby which opened as needed to let the pets of the tower out, offered "The pink painting'sss."

"Password," came Acel's voice, muffled and somewhat strained, as if he was trying to push the first head through, "isss dilligrout." Shortly, Acel succeeded in pushing Par through the bizarrely tiny hole, only to tumble out himself and have Sus scrambling for purchase as they fell the two or so feet to the ground in a jumbled, knotted mess.

"Ouch," Sus finished succinctly as I picked the tangle up cautiously by his tail.

I turned to the Fat Lady, who was watching this all with some mixture of confusion and feigned disinterest, and offered her, "Dilligrout," before proceeding to ask the Runespoor just what it thought it was doing.

"Nothing, Mère."

"For you, Paracelsussss, 'nothing' usually qualifiesss assss something. You weren't trying to tune Lavender'sss wirelessss to Muggle stationsss again, were you?" Ignoring the strange, weary looks of my housemates as I passed through the common room, I headed up to the Second Year girls dorm.

The first two heads answered too quickly, "No," while Sus added, "They broke it."

"Did not!"

"Did not!"

"Did too!"

"Did not!"

"Did not!"

"Did too!"

"Did not!"

"Did not!"

"Did too!"

"Did not!"

"Did not!"

"Did too!"

I banged the Runespoor against the wall, then paled a bit. What kind of mother would do something like that? I made it up to him by letting him wrap around me like a necklace, which he was barely large enough to do, even after his last moulting. It didn't matter, 'cause I'd not even made it to the First Years' landing before Par and Acel retaliated the only way they knew how: The UK's Number One (Muggle) Singles' Chart.

"Strumming my pain with hisss fingersss."

"Singing my life with hisss wordsss."

"Did not!"

"Killing me softly with hisss song, killing me softly."

"With hisss song, telling my whole life with hisss words."

Sus, rather unsuccessfully the way Acel was writhing out of time to the music, tried to bite his brother-head, then, realizing the futility of it, began spitting curses as the first two heads joined together for a loud and quite annoying duo, "Killing me softly, with hisss song!"

I did the only thing I could and banged him into the door of Alycone's dorm room to knock for me.

"That wasss."

"Just mean."

"Mère."

Demelza (for who could not recognize her deep Irish lilt?) called for me to come in, so I pushed the already cracked door open to reveal a scene not foreign to me in of dorm life: Demelza, my newest Chaser, was busy towelling her hair by her bed, The Jasmine Fire's latest hit, "Surviving Salvation," belting out of her radio. One of her dorm-mates was, probably with liberal use of silencing spells, was sleeping through this on the bed in next to her, arm dangling out from under one side of the blankets, leg sticking out from another. Alycone lay on her bed, nose in the latest copy of Witch Broomstick? with her wand tucked behind her ears and several pages displaying post-it-like tags. I set the box down atop her trunk and, when this failed to get her attention, rapped on the side of her bedpost. "Alycone," I said, rather hoping she'd heard me, "I ran into your brother – your mother sent you these." She still did not move, or give any sign she'd heard me at all, just recrossed her legs in the air and flipped a page.

"Here, let me try," my Chaser told me, shouting, "Hey, Al!" as she threw something glass from her beside table towards the bed. "Catch!"

Surprisingly, Alycone looked up, spotted the bottle of perfume, and caught it quite deftly. I repeated my earlier statement and tacked on a, "Why on Merlin's green earth didn't you try out for the house team?"

She shrugged and pulled the shoebox towards her, all but squealing in delight (the greatest reaction I'd yet to see from the girl, including when she was told her father had died three days before her twelfth birthday) at the sight of several brightly coloured and bizarrely animated comics inside, some translated into English, others in their original Sino-Japanese. "You could play for England and I'm not that great."

I snorted. "Have you seen the number of times I've been too injured to play? The team could always use a second-string Seeker."

Collecting her perfume bottle from the mess of comics that now spread across Alycone's bed, "I was in there last year to get something for my allergies, and I saw a bed in there with your name carved into it."

"I did that myself Third Year, after my hundredth day in there…" I smiled grimly at the thought. My poor, poor Nimbus.

"I don't have a broom or nothing," the girl continued, ignoring the side conversation.

"You can practice on my Firebolt until we can get you one of your own. Christmas is coming up, you know…"

She raised her eyebrow at me from the other side of the new comic she'd grabbed, "Cool. Just make sure Uncle Sirius stays out of the kitchen," and proceeded to ignore us entirely.

Demelza shrugged. "She's got the eye for a Seeker. Little crazy, but who isn't in this place. I told my parents – Muggles, the both of them – a little about last year over the summer, and I could've sworn they thought I made half of it up. I get the Daily Prophet, though, and showed them the articles in there about you. Couldn't believe you really locked Umbridge in a broom closet overnight – I framed that one."

Groaning, "Not you too," I fiddled with the locket Severus had given with me, trying not to worry about what was going to come next. I saw her confused look, so I explained, "My adoptive father and his cousin have newspaper cuttings all around the house. It's quite annoying, seeing my name in print all the time."

"Still, way cool. I wish I'd have thought of it. Hey, you scheduled the practices yet? And what about that Maquis thing? Is that going to go on again this year too, 'cause if what Snape's teaching is Second Year material, I don't know what we were supposed to be learning last year?"

"Er, I've not decided yet," that was true enough, "but I should have a schedule posted in the common room by Monday."

"Okay then," she smiled, and, finding a hair tie, pulled her curls back. "I still can't believe I'm on the team."

"Better believe it," and I took my jittery leave. As I made my way back down into the common room, tuning out Par and Acel's latest song and Sus's curses, I could not help but wonder if I'd missed something important in childhood like surrounded me here. But, equally, I could not help but wonder what whispers and shocked proclamations would come tomorrow or the next day or the day after, or whenever my "secret" was found out. Would these people still like me then, call me their hero and praise me for things that anyone in my position could have done? Or would they turn on me as they so often had, leaving me with no one but myself. Well, myself and this one inside of me, who could not easily leave…

So I did what I could. I curled my hair.

There was still no sign of Severus.

I chose a red, one-shoulder number from the back of my closet.

I hoped he'd be back soon. I had this vague idea that, if I could dress myself up, make myself look less sixteen and more not-a-student, this could work out for the best. I doubted it. I just wanted one nice, not secret moment with him before he got rid of me for having his child and possibly ruining his spy-image forever. At the same time, I dreaded his coming, for soon that would mean, as it inevitably would, the end of our glorious, happy time together. I would steal what I could of happiness… and then submit myself to the lifetime I'd be forced to live without him without complaint.

I was slipping on a pair of low heels when he walked into the room, the air of one who'd been recently patched up heavy upon him. "You look nice."

"Well, you know, word got around that I was looking for a nice vampire to meet up with and, what do you know, this charming vampire lad called Sanguini wrote me up and invited me for dinner tonight… Oh, fine then," I said at last, when it was clear Severus only found this minimally amusing, "Remember how, that week I was forced to stay with my 'relations,' I asked what we were?"

He nodded gravely, taking in my seventy-five galleon, twenty-sickle dress with a sense of foreboding. Personally, if he wants to worry, he should spend more time looking at my hundred galleon shoes; expensive shoes are always signs of trouble. However stupid it was, it pleased me inordinately that he liked how I looked. I knew he loved me, but, still, I needed assurances from time to time. Especially now.

Still, trying not to show my own anxiety – I was carrying his child I was carrying our child I was carrying his child beneath a layer of crimson silk and pale skin – I laughed off his worry lightly. At least, I hope it came off as lightly. "I just want, once, for us to do something that normal couples do. Just dinner. That's all I'm asking. Not even at a wizarding restaurant." I went to my chest of drawers and pulled a guidebook from my underwear drawer. It was pale blue and entitled So You're a Millionaire: Forty-Eight Ways to Empty Your Pockets (EU Edition), a gift I'd received from The Twins for my birthday, along with its fellow EU Editions, So You Want to Be a Lawyer: Nineteen Reasons to Change Your Mind and So You Don't Want to Live with Your Parents For the Rest of Your Life: Thirty Steps to Passing Your NEWTS. "It's in Oxfordshire! Who would possibly expect to look for us in an expensive restaurant," (and yet, oddly enough, a meal for two was slightly more then only one of my shoes – they were those kind of shoes, and when I said expensive shoes were a sign of trouble earlier, I mean the kind of you've-gotten-me-"in-trouble"-and-so-we're-going-to-discuss-whether-I'm-going-to-raise-our-child-with-or-without-you kind of trouble that, with any luck, a man only gets to go through once in his life. I mean, have you seen the current Galleons to Pounds Sterling rate? It's like one to five or something like that. These shoes and, by default, the meal of which we're shortly to partake could be a mortgage payment, for Merlin's sake! Okay, that's out of my system), "in Oxfordshire?"

"Do I want to know what brought this on?" he asked wearily.

With a kiss on the cheek, "I'll tell you later. Just, please, Severus, all I want is one night of something we don't have to worry about hiding. Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons is quite, secluded, has a very active policy against paparazzi-"

He did his raising of the eyebrow, "Should we worry about paparazzi?"

"Well, as you've so often pointed out, dear, I am la Baronne de Calais and," thanks to some handy detective work on my part, i.e., the purchase of a biography of myself while getting my school supplies, "seem to be fairly interesting to the Muggles as well, considering a majority of the family fortune comes, it appears, from wineries that, apparently made the sommelier who was near the main desk when I called from the single working phone in the Muggle Studies classroom to make the reservations near faint from envy. And then when I added that the second member of my party would be the Earl Dover-"

He was shrugging into the Muggle dress clothes I'd laid out for him by this point. "Book, or the signet ring in my desk drawer?"

"I was looking for a quill last week," I shrugged myself and perched on the edge of the bed. "Don't know why you didn't tell me."

"Didn't think it important."

"It's not, but it's interesting. I mean, if you're going to tease me for something I cannot help, you might give me some ammunition of my own." Suddenly overcome by what I was going to have to do, I jumped from the bed to pace a little frantically in the living room. I killed things. It was my destiny to kill things. My job – my only point in life – was to slay my parents' murderer or be killed in turn by him. It had nothing to do with children, or marriage, or happiness. It was just kill and hope to God and Merlin that it'd be over soon, so I could be happy and marry and have children in the order it was supposed to go and, if that was too much, if the war just continued on and on and on and I couldn't protect my mind (the ink-potion had to be done soon…. it had to be) from Voldemort or had to go back to Azkaban South or lost another loved one or killed or saw Severus leave me, I might just snap… I know it's supposed to be natural, hate, like love and suffering and hunger and apathy and boredom, but, by all the Gods above, the more I think about it, the more I see even Ari coming back to life and still loving her children, the more I remembered that Sirius broke out of an inescapable jail for me, that there is a whole squadron of people who would gladly keep me alive, their glorious Saviour of the Light, so long as I stay sweet and Light and innocent and bake them cookies in the kitchen of HQ… But if they could treat a child like they treated me, those bastards who conventions call my aunt and uncle and cousin, then they have no right to be treated as convention would dictate. Forget lawsuits and trials and jails! Those things are too good for wild, uncivilized animals like them! A good spell or three would have them all turn into hogs! Let them rut in their pitiless, porcine ways for all I care! That could be the greatest revenge, bringing their nature to the forefront for all to see – how literary! how fitting!

But could it not be a greater revenge to forget about them for the rest of my life after this night? to raise a child the right way, and continue on like they never would have let me, a vineyard heiress and hero and Black Princess for all I know, and prove to the world once and for all that I am my own person and will live and breathe and breed and whatever else I might wish, with or without their blessing, so help me God!

Severus came out the bedroom then, looking so very nice in his Muggle suit. Black suits him… So what if he has that dratted Prince nose or is twenty years older than me? I love him, and that is all that matters. If he's in the right mind, he'll see that too, and not cast me out, a pariah in the kingdom I saved… Merlin, that was a little biblical. Okay, must breathe. Breathing is good, for me and for the… baby within me. I have chosen to keep the baby, I must care for it. Must make sure to eat right, no more skipping breakfast because I'm tired of Hermione's take on my sleeping arrangements… And folic acid, isn't that important? Where do you find folic acid? Leafy things, I think, and bread… I like bread; that could work… God damn Voldemort, it's at times like these I need a mother! I can't just go up to McGonagall or Mrs. Weasley and… I'm going to have to owl Mrs. Weasley after I've broken the news. "I think I've got some cufflinks in the back room," he said, disappearing momentarily into his lab. It wouldn't surprise me. He probably had all the paraphernalia befitting the Earl Dover back there. Probably some of the really family jewels back there too: I'd have to have him dig some of those out for me sometime. They'd certainly be interesting to see. If he still is talking to me after tonight…

Oh Merlin, Herne, and Hecate, why oh why oh why did I think this was a good idea? I should have just told Madam Pomprey that I didn't want it, just to get rid of it, that it was impossible for me to have children when I was such a stupid sixteen-year-old girl that I let Voldemort almost trick me into rushing into the DoM without a plan and couldn't stop him from coming back in the firs place and probably forgot to take a contraceptive potion on some crucial night thus resulting in this "blessed miracle." How would I take care of it? How, tell me that? My school schedule was light this year compared to last, but, God above, a baby born in March would have to be taken care of the rest of the school year – and all of next. I mean, sure I could take my DADA NEWTS this year no problem, but I'm not a bloody genius! I don't know Seventh Year Charms or Transfiguration, except handy charms like the Awl Spell…

I'm going to make myself sick with worry, that's all I can say. I mean, who knows what trouble Paracelsus is going to get into while we're gone… Monopoly with Archimedes is one thing (one very dangerous thing), but I've returned to the rooms sometimes when he's stayed behind and found him listening to whatever Muggle station he can get on the wireless. You know how awkward it is to be sitting down to lunch, trying to hold a conversation with your friends, and then have to stop because your Runespoor decided to start singing "Material Girl" in your pocket for no reason that you can possibly think of and hiss at them to stop? And, if that's the trouble a talking three-headed snake can get into, what about a baby? I suppose in a boarding school full of teenagers, it wouldn't be so hard to find a babysitter, but they have classes too…

Oh God!

"You find them?" I asked, trying to keep my voice calm as he re-entered.

"No. I just transfigured a pair." Then, in his subtle way, he examined me as if hoping for an instruction manual to be chained somewhere. "Did your Order of Merlin come through today?"

Hissing at Paracelsus to be good and not to do anything Archimedes said, I paused and looked at him funny. "Why would I be celebrating that?"

We headed out the door and to the main hall, where it was closest to the nearest gate we could apparate from. "Most people would."

"There's nothing glorious in what I did. Others have done as much for less."

"Yes, but those people were aurors, trained and paid to do so. Very little in history does a fifteen-year-old witch lead others to turn an ambush against its perpetrators and capture several Dark wizards that society was protecting."

I blushed as we were coming up the final staircase. "You're going to give me a big head, Severus."

"I think I know by now that if I don't try to inflate your ego you'd be too humble to receive anything accorded you."

We both sobered a little as we entered the main hall, where others might see us. It was an automatic thing, something neither of us ever had discussed but did without little thought. It was fairly pointless now, though, considering dinner was being served in the Great Hall and it was unlikely that any students would be lingering around the hall while there was food on the table. Seeing the coast clear, we continued. "Not true at all."

He made a snapish sound that I had long learned signified humour, and changed the subject, "You never answered my earlier question."

Nervously, "Which one?"

"The paparazzi."

"I always thought," trying to hide my relief, "that they were little better than stalkers with contracts. And la Baronne de Calais and The Earl Dover eating at Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons? Together? Royalty magazine would pay a small fortune for that, and Star and Stave quite a bit larger one."

"It is that kind of-"

Then, storming out of the Great Hall as he was opening the main doors for me, came the explosive, "…just leave me the hell alone!" as Ginny, fuming, slammed open then shut the door to the Hall. Spinning back towards the stairs to the tower, she stopped mid-step and barely caught herself at the sight of us. "Anything you two want to add?"

I looked cautiously at her, then Severus, then Ginny again, and shook my head slowly, not knowing what was going on. Her boyfriend of the summer was my yearmate, Dean Thomas, but I've no idea of this had something to do with him, a new or old boyfriend, or even her brother.

More calmly, "You look good, Ely," she added after a quiet, awkward moment, and then proceeded to head up the main staircase. Weird. But what in my life isn't?

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I leaned sideways to whisper in Severus's ear as they announced the eighth course. "I'll be right back," I told him, and slipped out of L'Orangerie into the main house. Taking a seat in one of the parlours, I looked over my shoulder to make sure Severus had not followed me and, once assured he hadn't, wrung my hands together, literally sinking into the chair. "I can do this," I whispered.

We were on to the desert courses – but I'd not gotten up the nerve yet. No, as the courses had moved on and on and on, the nerves just built and bubbled and frothed in me until I felt I might go mad from the press of it all. Maybe madness would be a good alternative for awhile…

"You look like you've the weight of the world on you," a voice standing somewhere nearby. "Might I help?

I didn't look up or open my eyes. "Only if you happen to have any idea how I tell my boyfriend I'm pregnant." Or defeat a Dark Lord – but that'd be asking too much from a Muggle.

"'N' I take it this's an unwelcome thin'?"

"Unexpected, at least."

A woman, maybe a little older then the age my mother would have been had she lived, was sitting on a chair across from me now in an aubergine-and-olive dress that I was immediately jealous of, as beautiful as it was. "It was somethin' like that with my Richard 'n' I." She smiled at me warmly, motherly, and more than slightly wistful. "We'd gotten engaged while we were still in college – how my parents hated that. 'N' then I found out I was pregnant with our son, Elliot… Wasn't how I'd have done it, certainly, given the choice, but I wouldn't change it for anythin'. I'm Catherine Bentley Aldington, by the way." She offered me her hand.

"Alexandrie-Margaux Potter," I said, taking it. "But please, call me Éléonore."

"Ah, so you're the one whose wine the sommelier has been praising all night."

I gave a half-snort, "I wish I could take credit for that. To be honest, I know nothing of the family business."

With a chuckle, "Who does anymore? Now, let an old lady give you a piece of advice: if he loves you, he'll do the right thin' by you, whate'er that may be for the two of you. He obviously loves you, whoe'er he is – you're here, aren't you?" She smiled at me again, and I was struck by so many things. Her white, white teeth for one; the just off-natural colouring of her hair for another. Not for the first time I wondered about my own mother, so much a stranger and more intriguing character in my unknown history than my father, who everyone knew and had vague stories of him and his rakish, charming ways. Was she religious or not? I knew the inhabitants of Azkaban South were Anglican in the Christmas-Easter way, but I did not know if that was something Vernon had brought to the table or was only for show or something inherent to the Evans. Was she traditional or nonconformist? She followed the Potter family way of French names… or maybe that was all Dad's idea and she'd no say in that, though I doubted it. Dad thought the sun and moon rose for Mum. Was she a morning bird or night owl? I know she was brave and beautiful and very much in love, but what would Mum have thought if I owled her from school and told her that I was carrying the DADA professor's baby (despite the fact I was self-studying his class) and had every intention to keep it, sixteen and unmarried and with a year of school more to go or not? I could only believe, as McGonagall had once said, she'd have wanted me to be happy, and that I made Severus happy too. "Come now, Éléonore; we don't want to miss the dessert course. I believe Chef Blanc has prepared his famous soufflé aux framboises, 'n' it is not somethin' anyone should miss."

I let Catherine lead me back into L'Orangerie. Our tables were both by the left-side windows, mine closer to the front then hers. "Well," I said, taking my seat and smelling the raspberry soufflé she'd so spoken of, "it was nice meeting you Mrs. Aldington."

Though she may have been surprised that my "boyfriend," as I so called him, was by far closer to her age then mine, she was well schooled in not showing it, and begged me to both call her Catherine and introduce her to my companion.

He answered before me, polite when he chose to be, which, luckily, included this moment. "Severus Snape."

"Catherine Bentley Aldington. A pleasure to meet you. Now, I think I should be getting back to my Richard before he wonders where I've gotten off to."

As she walked off, I ate my soufflé and planned what I would say. "Aldington. I wonder if she is related to the Bristol Cars Aldingtons."

"Here? I wouldn't be surprised. I'm more interested in how you know the name of a Muggle car manufacturer, though, let alone who owns it."

In an embarrassed way that I rarely got to see on him (though, to my amusement, he'd been some degree of such throughout the whole meal, which just goes to show all those years of spying don't teach one to be comfortable in every situation after all), "I considered getting one after seeing how pleased you were with Black's."

I couldn't help but smile widely at this and lean over to (however impolite it was to do in public) kiss him lightly on the lips. His hand, which had travelled to rest on my thigh, squeezed my knee. The serveur coughed, and I blushed a little as he took away our plates. This was it. The coffee course was next and, if I didn't do this now, I didn't know when I would do it (though why, oh why oh why I had thought that taking him to a place like you might find on page one-hundred eleven of So You're a Millionaire: Forty-Eight Ways to Empty Your Pockets, all dressed up and eating food in the middle of Oxfordshire with pretentious French names, was the way to tell him, I don't know. It had just seemed like a good idea at the time, though I was also sitting on the roof of the astronomy tower at the time, so what do I know?). So I took a deep breath, turned towards him again, and said softly, with all the Gryffindor courage I could muster, "Severus, I love you." Another deep breath, "So I want you to know that I… I'm pregnant."

You could see the gears turning in his dark eyes, though his face, at first, gave no reaction. Why I'd been acting strange all day, why I had insisted that he take me to dinner despite arranging everything myself; why I had appeared nervous and slightly restless throughout this meal I had planned for us to attend and all of its ten courses and House-of-Potter-owned-winery Wines. For a moment, no emotion showed at all, only realization. Then, not at all the reaction I was expecting, "Oh," managed to escape his seemingly frozen lips. In fact, he appeared unable to move at all, a statue except for the rather frequent blinking of his eyes.

Not wanting to loose my nerve now, though it was quickly faltering, "I'm about two months along – and," I swallowed, feeling the clawing burn of fear trying to close off my vocal cords, "and I'm going to keep the baby." I swallowed again. What more could I possibly say? Oh, yes. "I'm due 27 March."

There was silence for a moment, and I think he was trying, like me, to breathe slowly and calmly. A different serveur placed our plates of pompous confections before us, while another served us expensive coffee. I mean, one hundred Galleon shoes – what else could he have been expecting? I wanted him to go against everything I feared, to tell me that I wasn't going to be packed up and sent home or, worse, to Quedlinburg Abby; to tell me that he loved me and would stay with me and acknowledge the child as his own. I wanted him to- God, I don't know what I wanted him to do, but it involved being my vocal than, "Oh," for Merlin's sake! My anxiety palpable, I turned to my plate and saw, in the centre of the offering of these tiny cakes, something I never, ever, might have expected to see in my entire life. I actually even looked over at Severus's plate to make sure it wasn't just some not-so-cheap decoration that one-hundred-Galleon-shoe-necessitating places like this used to scare witches like me during the final course.

It was my turn to blink slowly then, as, with equal slowness, lift the centrepiece from its place and roll it around in my fingers. Solitaire, emerald-cut, narrow-banded; it exuded a feeling of age and importance and not a little magic. On the band was written the inscription "Rut 1:16-17," not something, I thought, Severus would have engraved himself.

He'd arranged this before I'd told him. It had nothing to do with my "condition," just his love for me. Or maybe something else, I don't know, but… I'm not sure I can breathe.

Severus took the ring out of my hands and held it as if to put it on me. "This has been in my grandmother Jocaste's family since the Inquisition," he said slowly, slipping it onto my fourth finger. "It was the fashion to be seen as religious in those days. It stands for the Ruth's famous passage: 'Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your god, my god. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the lord do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me.' I intended it before and I intend it still. Éléonore Potter, will you marry me?"

And what could I say to that but, "Yes"?

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Banns, by Wizarding law, must be published in a visible, public forum for the three weeks prior to a wedding. It was an old holdover tradition, but it worked, for the most part. I chose the national newspaper with the smallest circulation and sent in a one-liner with only the pertinent details. On 11 October, between an advert for rain-proof plaster warts and a woman selling one-tailed Krups, was the announcement: "Seventh Earl Dover to wed Twelfth Baroness of Calais." It read the same in the 18 October edition, but, by then, I suppose someone who knew who the Earl Dover and Baronne de Calais were had read the article, for the next day I was returning with Ron and Hermione, joking about something ridiculous, when my only veteran Chaser was cursed by an opal necklace wrapped in the kind of pale blue and white paper that you see on wedding gifts and addressed to "La Baronne." The tag fell off in the mud when Katie dropped the package, and I slipped it into my pocket. It was enough for me to know that Voldemort, or someone working for him, knew and was sending something that caused a girl to spin out of control, like she was caught up in a tornado…

I told Severus, of course, but that was the extent of it all. We all already knew that Voldemort wanted me dead. I couldn't let anyone else know why I might be so terrified or why someone might be sending me an opal necklace in wedding paper.

Our plan was simple. Our plan was straight forward. We were engaged 15 September. It took three weeks for our request, sent and received in a plain brown envelope through the unknowing Andi's post box at The Sleeping Dragon, for a marriage licence to be processed, which, do to the joys of Calais, while belonging to the British MoM, was physically located in Muggle France and therefore legal. The day after it arrived, I sent out the banns to the paper – The Quibbler, which, with a little over a thousand copies daily printed, was the smallest national Wizarding newspaper. The first day we could, after the posting of the banns, marry was Halloween. I saw the irony. So we booked half of Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons for ceremony and reception for the day… The Weasleys, the Caudwells, Sirius, Remus, Tonks, Dumbledore, McGonagall, Hermione – in short, everyone who was to be invited – would be kidnapped the night before. Then and only then would we tell the world, and let the shoes fall as they may. Or is it chips? I can't remember the objects that we said would be falling, but they were heavy and not meant to be dropped. That way we could avoid minimal Voldemort interference. Then none of his old Death Eater buddies would be likely to try and kill him for defecting (for why else would "The Chosen One" like myself agree to marry him?) or me, well, because I was me.

I, personally, would have liked to have shouted it to the hills. Gods above, my dreams were coming true – something had to go wrong. Something besides an opal necklace that I never received. But I looked, and looked, and, by all the Gods above and the demons below, I looked. I pinched myself even, but, no, it wasn't a dream. I was marrying the man of my dreams and having his child. Things were going as I wanted them! The ink potion that Severus had started on was nearly done, and my mind would soon be protected too. And then all I need to do is vanquish Voldemort and we can live happily until the coming of the One-Who-Destroys-All-Happiness… It's so strange, to be so perfectly happy and so deathly afraid at the same time, to be singing Par and Acel's stupid pop songs with them as I walk down the hall and, the same time, start laughing with quiet hysteria to myself when, trying to butter my toast, the butter will not stay on the knife and the pats keep on falling all over the plate, not where I want them to go. It's insane, it's hormonal, but… but… As much as I fear something wrong will happen because fate is a sadistic paedophile with the inane thought that I might enjoy what she does to me, part of me can't help but think, however insanely, that things will finally be happy for a while. I mean, even Ron was starting to notice Hermione, and she'd invited him to Slugy's Christmas party, which he'd announced to us Saturday ago when we'd had dinner with the editor of the Daily Prophet, Barnabas Cuffe. Nice guy, despite the fact he works for that rag. Sell his own mother for a story, but decent enough otherwise.

I went to breakfast on the last Friday before the wedding, whistling the latest Muggle release with my snakes and receiving some very odd looks. Upon arrival, I found Coote and Peakes, the sadly non-Weasley Beaters fate had, in her infinite wisdom, foisted on me, and forced them to examine a large diagram I'd drawn this morning of what, precisely, they'd done wrong the night before. They already thought I was partly crazy for the rant I'd given them at practice about how they are never – ever – to hit a bludger at me, but I didn't care. It was Friday, I could spend the weekend doing all the homework I'd end up missing next week because of the wedding, and finally be able to give some thought to what Dumbledore had said on Monday about mouth organs being mouth organs but rings not being just rings (making me wonder, not for the first time, if he was truly a mind reader).

And then the morning post arrived, leading me to spit out the tea I'd taken when I saw the headline of The Daily Prophet in a very undignified and un-baronial way.

Wedding Bells for Girl-Who-Lived

By Barnabas Cuffe

I decided then and there I was going to kill the man and sue him for everything he was worth. I chanced a look up at the head table, where my fiancé (!) had become unusually pale, even for him, and already several of his colleagues were turning to look at him with wide, astonished eyes that swivelled between the pair of us like a tennis match or something. He squared his shoulders, and turned to meet their stares head-on. Most looked away, instead keeping their gazes on me or the paper they clearly believed to be lying. I'd have to thank him so very much for that later. I read on to see the damage done after checking to make sure my Beaters were still studying the diagram:

In the social coup of the century, we at the Daily Prophet have discovered Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Black Potter, known as The Girl-Who-Lived to the public and Ely to her friends, is to marry Severus Eteocles Snape this Thursday, the fifteenth anniversary of her triumph over He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

Okay, that wasn't so bad. I forced myself on:

Miss Black Potter, aged 16, is the only child of the late Lily Margret Evans, formerly of Canterbury, and Jacques-Henri Alexandre Gérald Potter, the 12th Baron de Calais, and currently a Sixth Year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Widely known for her defeat of You-Know-Who on Halloween of 1981, Miss Black Potter has since gained notoriety during The Triwizard Tournament of 1994-5, where she won the cup despite being the youngest contestant, and for her nomination for the Order of Merlin, Second Class, for her actions at The Ministry of Magic last June…

…She has since been adopted by her godfather, the exonerated Sirius Orion Black, 36. Mr. Black was, at the time of this printing, unavailable for comment.

Hopefully Sirius would wait until after breakfast to send his howler. Already the few students who took the paper and those directly next to them were beginning to do the same dance the professors had done a moment before. I risked a look at Hermione, who was still in deep conversation with Ron about God knows what, apparently not having heard my earlier sputter or seen the paper that caused it. If I was lucky, Ron would kiss her here and now and she'd never notice. But, if wishes were fishes…

Mr. Snape, aged 36, is currently Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts, having served as school Potions Master for the better part of the last two decades. Son of the late pureblood Eileen Octavia Prince, 6th Countess Dover, and Tobias Justinian Snape, Mr. Snape has-

Hermione turned to say something to me and all but screamed when she saw the paper in my hands. This, naturally, caused those around me to look at her and, thus, the paper she'd now wrenched out of my hands and was reading in a shrill whisper for their benefit. "… is to marry Severus Snape-" Ron took the paper out of her hands in turn and blinked rapidly at it. By this point all available copies of the Prophet were being passed about, whispers and stares coming my way. "Harry, please, please tell me that this is just another one of the Prophet's lies." She looked so desperate, it almost hurt that she thought this might be a bad thing. I knew it. I knew that there was a shoe or die or chip or whatever that was going to fall… I knew it… knew it was too good to be true.

"Now, Hermione," I said slowly, reaching into Paracelsus's pocket and pulling slowly slipping the ring, which I'd kept with me at all times, onto my finger. When it emerged and Hermione saw the diamond, she went a unique shade of plum that I'd rarely seen outside of Surrey and its small Wizarding prison.

"What in Merlin's name are you thinking?"

That I loved him and wanted to be happy and that people would be happy for me. Obviously that was too much to ask and… and… Ron joined in, "You're actually marrying that slimy git?" the disgust in his voice was oppressing. And it was coming from all directions as my friends assailed me and the whispered clouded me and they all wanted to know if I'd lost my mind. I put my hand to my stomach, where our baby was growing, and tried to take calm in that, but I was still in my first trimester and there was little to notice there now. I tried to be calm for the baby. I tried to be cool and rational and everything that I've been to make a man my adoptive father's age fall in love with me, but I couldn't. I just couldn't. Could you have been, if they'd been calling you mad for loving the person you loved? You can't just decide who you love or what happens to you in life, only what you choose to do with it… Why couldn't the world understand that I wasn't its plaything? Why couldn't they understand that this was my life and I would do what I wanted with it, all of them be damned. So what if I was their supposed hero? So what if there was a damn prophesy and fate and all that Dumbledore had told me in our meetings together? I could just let them die, it was what they deserved! They called Voldemort bigoted and small-minded! At least he was honest about his prejudice! They were like devils, the public. They may say that they were good and kind and pro-Muggle and pro-this and pro-that, but it was all a lie to cover up that they were just as dogmatic and spiteful as Death Eaters! Sure, they didn't go around killing people, but that was only because they had lawyers do their dirty work for them. All this talk about happiness and happily ever after and soul mates and whatever you read in books or see in movies or whatnot, its all lies, because the moment someone's happy in real life people seek to destroy it. Vultures! Can't they just be happy in my happiness? Can't they see that at last something good as finally happened to me, the one who let Voldemort return, good and innocent people like Dianica and Raul and Emmaline Vance and Amelia Bones and so many, many others die…? Didn't I deserve that? Was that too much? What had I done to them that I couldn't be allowed to be happy? What, I ask you? What?

I felt the magic bubbling and frothing beneath my skin, fuelled by anger and rage and fear. What right had they? What right? I closed my eyes and tried to imagine that calm place in the forest of my mind, where the cat watched with amber, almandine eyes – anything at all to calm down, but imagining that sacred glade only caused the magic to burst forth from me like a wave, a sphere of raw and violent power that flung everyone and everything within five yards of me away, breaking dishes and banging heads, and then let the darkness take me into its warm and welcoming arms as it diminished back into myself, weakened and very much drained…

I dreamed of dark-haired children just outside my vision and a black-furred jaguar that lay next to me while I slept.


	21. In Which All Good Things Come To an End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is my least favourite chappie in the entire story; if you feel the same way, it gets better after this, I promise

"Marriage is a public proclamation of the love two people share for another…" I heard him begin, but I my blood was beating hard and fast, and time was moving both extraordinarily fast and terribly slow, so that at one moment everything moved fast – Pachelbel's "Canon in D" raced in the background, but little things Fleur (being either French, a romantic, or practising for her own wedding in the summer) had managed to put together with the inn's help stuck out in breathless – the bouquet of green cymbidium orchids and hydrangeas, white freesia, and pale satin ribbon in my hand (and Ginny's too, because she said the only way she'd go along with the wedding was if she'd be my bridesmaid); the way the purpling light came through the windows that overlooked the garden behind us, where a few birds rested the ligustrum that shone like gold in light – stuck in my mind. And his eyes, his beautiful dark eyes, they glittered warmly as they watched me watching him. And I, with my eyes, which threatened to cloud with tears of joy as the ceremony proceeded, watched him watching me watch him, and I wondered if it was really possible for a person to get everything they'd ever wanted without waking up to find it was all a dream.

Dumbledore, who held amongst his many, many positions the ability to officiate weddings, continued in his pointed maroon-and-lime hat, "And so we have come together, we friends and family of Severus Eteocles Snape and Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Black Potter, to witness and share in this declaration of their love and commitment to one another…"

I couldn't believe this was happening. Here I was, and my cobbled-together family, and my friends, and though they frankly couldn't understand why I loved this man, they knew I wanted to marry him (and though they couldn't understand, because I'd not told them about the child I was carrying, why I insisted it had to be today, on the fifteenth anniversary of my parents' death, on the fifteenth anniversary of my "triumph" over The Dark Lord) and would sit here behind me and watch, because it made me happy. Sure, I was fairly certain Mrs. Weasley had forced Ron to come (because he kept on saying, the whole time I tried to explain that I loved Severus, and that I wanted to marry him of my own free will, that I was mad, surely drugged, and that undoubtedly it was a trick of the enemy's to get me into his hands), and that Hermione was torn between wanting to see me happy (which I truly do think she wanted me to be), thinking that this was a desperate attempt (on account of the mental pathologies surely created in me on account of my troubled childhood) at unconditional love, and that this was surely all wrong (because I was sixteen and he thirty-six) but here nonetheless. And I knew Sirius still thought St. Bernard's a better choice then this future, but was here because he was my father, however that had come about, and loved me and would stand by me if this was truly my wish, and that everyone else was seriously considering what was going on for me to want to marry in the middle of my Sixth Year, when there was no possible reason (in their eyes, not knowing what I did, that I was doomed to kill or be killed) why I couldn't wait to graduate, wait for the war to be over so that they didn't have to loose their spy, and so on and so on… Perhaps I was crazy, perhaps this was all madness, but they were all here, every one of them.

"…for, as is said in First Corinthians, chapter thirteen, verses four through eight: Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself, is not puffed up. Love rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. If there is anything in this world that cannot be understood by those who have never experienced, it is love. If anything in this world exists that is stronger and less breakable then magic, it is love. And, if any one thing in this world can keep what is Dark and cruel and breakable at bay, it is love. It is a power understood by so few, but felt by so many, and never more strongly then here, today, between dear Severus and Éléonore.

"The love of those who find love in each other is the greatest and most precious thing of all. Perhaps it was AA Milne who said it best: 'Let's look for dragons,' I said to Pooh. 'Yes, let's,' said Pooh to Me. We crossed the river and found a few…" Severus looked like he was about to roll his eyes at the Headmaster. I tried not to burst into laughter, succeeding only in keeping my smile one of amusement. Sometimes, I think Dumbledore does these sorts of things on purpose, just to annoy Severus. Good-naturedly, of course. He continued, "'Yes, those are dragons all right,' said Pooh. 'As soon as I saw their beaks I knew. That's what they are,' said Pooh, said he. 'That's what they are,' said Pooh. 'Let's frighten the dragons,' I said to Pooh. 'That's right,' said Pooh to Me. 'I'm not afraid,' I said to Pooh, and I held his paw and I shouted 'Shoo! Silly old dragons!' … and off they flew. 'I wasn't afraid,' said Pooh, said he, 'I'm never afraid with you.' So wherever I am, there's always Pooh, there's always Pooh and Me… 'It isn't much fun for one, but two can stick together,' says Pooh, says he. 'That's how it is.'" Dumbledore turned towards Severus and began on the rites. "Do you, Severus Eteocles Snape, take Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Black Potter to be your wife?"

"I, Severus Eteocles Snape, take you, Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Black Potter, to be my wife."

"To be your constant friend, your faithful partner, and your love from this day forward?"

"To be my constant friend, my faithful partner, and my love from this day forward."

"In the presence of God, your family and friends, do you offer your solemn vow to be this witch's faithful partner in sickness and in health, in good times and bad, in joy as well as in sorrow?"

"In the presence of God, our family and friends, I offer you my solemn vow to be your faithful partner in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, and in joy as well as in sorrow."

"And do you promise to love this witch unconditionally, to support her in her goals, to honour and respect her, to laugh with her and cry with her, and to cherish her for as long as you both shall live?"

"I promise to love you unconditionally, to support you in your goals, to honour and respect you, to laugh with you and cry with you, and to cherish you for as long as we both shall live." I tried not to squeal with joy. We were so close… I remembered the strangest things at this moment: the first look we shared, that first kiss after I'd literally haunted his rooms for days until he returned; the conversations we'd had where, for no apparent reason, one or the other of us would look up from the caldrons I was cleaning or the papers he was grading and start talking about nothing or The Summa Theologica or De Jure Belli ac Pacis or my annoying classmates or the longness of Sunday afternoons or our mutually unpleasant childhood. I remembered the look in his eyes that day, that day I'd dreamed of Sirius dying and I killed Lucius Malfoy instead, and found me in our rooms and we made love for the first time… How I loved him.

"And do you, Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Black Potter, take Severus Eteocles Snape to be your husband?" Dumbledore asked me now.

"I, Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Black Potter, take you, Severus Eteocles Snape, to be my husband."

"To be your constant friend, your faithful partner, and your love from this day forward?"

"To be my constant friend, my faithful partner, and my love from this day forward."

"In the presence of God, your family and friends, do you offer your solemn vow to be this wizard's faithful partner in sickness and in health, in good times and bad, in joy as well as in sorrow?"

"In the presence of God, our family and friends, I offer you my solemn vow to be your faithful partner in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, and in joy as well as in sorrow."

"And do you promise to love this wizard unconditionally, to support him in his goals, to honour and respect him, to laugh with him and cry with him, and to cherish him for as long as you both shall live?"

"I promise to love you unconditionally, to support you in your goals, to honour and respect you, to laugh with you and cry with you, and to cherish you for as long as we both shall live." And if my voice was a little… higher than usual with emotion, I couldn't help it. God, how I loved him. Merlin above, I loved him. I don't remember the moment when I first knew I loved him. I don't know the first time I wanted to kiss him. And I can't remember the first time I knew, truly knew, that I wanted to spend my life with him. But, Merlin, it was finally happening…

From his pocket, Severus pulled out his grandmother Jocaste's – a ring passed along that woman's line from mother to son to give his bride, since Maria de Salinas came from Spain with Queen Catherine and married Baron Willoughby de Eresby in 1516 – wedding band, which, like her engagement ring, was small and narrow with three small diamonds. His hands, which had so sturdily stirred many a potion, seemed to tremble a little as he slid the ring onto the fourth finger of my left hand. "With this ring, I thee wed, and, with it, I bestow upon you all the treasures of my mind, heart, and hands."

His own was thicker, slightly bevelled, and I was more visibly shaking as I repeated the words and placed the band upon his hand. Was he my soul mate? I don't know. I can't even say if there was such a thing as the soul or if they were ever cleaved in two, only that there was this myth, fundamental inside of me, that there was someone out there, whatever he was called, would love me for ever and always, for what I was and what I wished to be, and would never see me as anything other. And this person, this being, would never leave me. I would not have to fear, as I sometimes thought my aunt might, that the person I married would leave me, or tire of the shit I put them through (or seemed to put them through, just by existing, just by having lived) and go away for someone younger and prettier (or maybe not) and less mentally damaging. And I wouldn't have to fear that, in his heart of hearts, this man I loved and had cloven to didn't understand me and never would because, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, for early death or a late one in our bed, this man was like me, damaged and broken, with a strange, inhuman taste for odd bits of literature (our nightstands intertwined with Heinlein and Kierkegaard, Joyce and Dostoevsky, O'Neill and Jigger), and, perhaps irrevocably, haunted by things that we had to do and still woke at night in dead sweat over. Soul mate? Maybe. I only knew that he was the one man I could love all my life and, now, I could do so openly.

Then, "By the power invested in me by the International Confederation of Wizards, the Sovereign State of England and the Suzerians of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride." I was tingling with – with – with so many emotions some did not have names, all I know it was joy that I felt as I crossed the small distance between us and as he leaned down to reach my lips, and we shared our first married kiss. So what if Ron, at least, and more than likely a few others, closed their eyes and tried not to see. I was happy. I was married. My baby was now, officially, not a bastard. No one had died so far today. Life was good.

After a long (or was it short, faked by my mind to seem like forever?) moment, we broke apart. I was Mrs. Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Black Potter Snape (Merlin, what a mouthful!) at last.

Mrs. Severus Snape

Lady Éléonore Snape, Countess Dover

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We stayed that night at the inn, and I was so tired from the emotion of the day and the child that was now starting its fourth month within me, that I divested myself of my wedding costume immediately upon entering the front room and changed into my old pyjamas. Then, with nary a kiss to my new husband, I curled up on the bed and fell into a heavy sleep as he read Atlas Shrugged, though, to be honest, if he was on John Galt's speech like it appeared he was, in the one thought I gave it, I could only wonder how he didn't fall asleep too from Galt's constant repetition…

For a while, if I dreamed, they were dark and unknown dreams that melted and mutated into each other before chance came for me to remember any of them. And then, suddenly, it changed:

There was a blackness, and a fire erupting from that blackness – that was all I could see at first – and gradually, out of the darkness, emerged shadowy figures, running; shouting. Both were male, shrouded in voluminous, torn, and bloody black robes. The shorter was knocked off his feet by a pale yellow spell, illuminating a face like I'd seen in pictures. So much like my father's – but the eyes were different. They were my eyes.

"My son," I said to myself, from whatever vantage point I was watching from. He threw a curse at the second figure, a failed crucio that was easily blocked. Then the other man, now illuminated by the orange light of the fire, came into view, and ice ran through my veins, I knew that face so well. "No Unforgivable Curses from you! You haven't got the nerve or the ability-" the voice was the same too, caring over the raucous yelping of a nearby dog. One question repeated in my dream mind: what was my son doing trying to crucio his father?

There was, of course, no answer – at least, not right away. My son, clearly about my age, sent a stream of ropes at Severus, which he lazily deflected. I was almost as concerned for my child's inability to cast a decent spell as I was for why he was casting them. Even in a dream, I would have wished a child of mine would be better prepared. "Fight back!" the boy screamed at him, stupid to think his father would try to hurt him. "Fight back, you cowardly-"

Severus, finding this exaggeratedly offensive, shouted back. "Coward, did you call me, Potter?" my heart stopped for a second. Why would he call our son "Potter" unless our plans for marriage had fallen through? But, but, but, even now I had his ring on my finger, and mine on his. "Your father," my heart, which had just in my dream restarted, failed entirely. What father might that be but him? But, wait: if my son was the age I was now, then Severus would be in his mid-fifties. Why then did he look as young as he did now? What other explanation could there be, though? I had no twin, no brother. Time-travel? And why was I trying to make sense of a dream? It was only a dream – wasn't it? "Would never attack me unless it was four on one, what would you call him, I wonder?" The boy sent a stupefy that was, again, simply blocked. Could he not cast silently at all? "Blocked again and again and again until you learn to keep your mouth shut and your mind closed, Potter! Now, come!" I noticed figures, wearing bone white masks I knew so well, behind Severus. It was to these he called now. "It is time to be gone, before the Ministry turns up-" what nightmare was it that Severus might still be a Death Eater? My dreams were always good ones, where things turned out well or, more often, ones where things went terribly awry. There never had been, before this, an in-between.

The boy was angry now. My son? I didn't know. Not anymore. I wanted this dream to end so I could wake and see Severus reading beside me and maybe ask him to read aloud… "…John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains—and he withdrew his fire—until the day when men withdraw their vultures…" Yes, that would be nice. How else, though, would he know a spell I'd only seen and never dared used from Severus's copy of Advanced Potion-Making? "Sectum-!" It was my mind, though…

My fiancé's voice was a roar now – true anger. Poor boy, whoever he was. If he was my son, I was proud of him for not trembling with fear before this wrath, "No, Potter!" the child flew backwards and hit the ground hard, loosing his wand and glasses in the process. "You dare use my own spells against me, Potter? It was I who invented them – I, the Half-Blood Prince! And you'd turn my inventions on me, like your filthy father, would you? I don't think so… no!"

Panting, "Kill me then. Kill me like you killed him, you coward-"

"DON'T CALL ME COWARD!" he sent a spell I couldn't identify at the boy. I wanted to scream – because, no matter what, even if this was a dream, I didn't want to dream of murder and other evil things, not of this, my wedding night. Even if the point of marriage – procreation – had already been accomplished and I was just sleeping side-by-side with my beloved…

I didn't scream, though, and instead woke in a cold start, Severus's hand on my shoulder. "Éléonore," he said softly, "Éléonore, wake up."

Panicked, I looked about me, as if some unnamed and faceless attacker was nearby, waiting for me to wake to kill us all. I scrambled out of Severus's reach and grabbed my wand from the night table. Only a split thought kept me from lighting my wand and having the wrath of the MoM fall upon me – and then I remembered that I was Lady Snape now, married – an adult – and could cast spells at will without worrying about RRUW being called into question by my actions. I lit it and looked at his own stricken features. "What's wrong?" I asked, anxious as to what retaliation Voldemort had sent our way for this wedding and anniversary.

"Death Eaters." I was already pulling on a robe and sliding my feet into my shoes. He was halfway into a pair of trousers himself.

"Where?"

"Northumberland – Miss Bone's family; – Devon – burning as they go, I don't know who they're after there; - and Shropshire. The Order has been called elsewhere, even those here. And, unfortunately, that just leaves us and your friends to deal with the ones downstairs."

I gave an oath Paracelsus had taught me and, tying the sash, I rushed out of the room. The noises, like a wall, assailed me. Shouting. The scent of burning ligustrum and melting stone. A scream or three rang out in the air and the birds, so lively with their joyful chirpings earlier, filled the night with the sound of their panicked escape. It was as if Eden was burning…

And so we fought off the coming darkness as we always had, and prayed for the day when we wouldn't have to.


	22. In Which I Remember and Forget

It began like this: no sooner had my friends gone flying back from me, the dishes and the crockery breaking as the table splintered for feet around me, then did Severus come rushing from the head table. I half thought he must have flown to me, or, at the very least, leapt the head table to reach me as fast as he did. Or maybe not. I sat wide-eyed on the bench, the only one which had not suffered from my rage, in stunned silence.

Then he reached me, just as the noise reached me, and put his hand on my shoulder. I became aware all at once of the stares and the pain in my chest, like I couldn't breathe at all. Severus tried to say something – I don't remember what – and tried to see what was the matter, for something was clearly the matter when a girl sends half her house scrawling across the hall. But I interrupted him, just asking that he take me to the infirmary. I'd three broken ribs, which none of the normal potions or spells could heal with my little baby, now at the end of its first trimester, still so small within me. Madam Pomprey was only just able to wrap them like Muggles do and apply a plaster of comfrey before "my friends" showed up.

Severus was speaking to Madam Pomprey behind the curtain when they showed – Ron, of course, all but frothing at the mouth; Hermione, who looked torn between scandalized and reluctantly pleased; Ginny, whose contemplative look I only later understood when she demanded to be my bridesmaid on pain of bat-bogey; and, oddly enough, Neville, who was silent throughout the initial yelling – and started demanding once more to know what I was taking, that I'd agree to marry their hated DADA teacher, and if they could send some along to Voldemort, because, given the strength of it, he'd be sure to turn around and start doing charity concerts for sick, elderly Muggles on it.

Quite naturally, Ron was the most vocal of the bunch. "You're actually marrying that slimy git?" he repeated. "I mean, actually, truly, marrying the guy?"

Slipping stiffly off the bed, moving gingerly as possible, "For once, The Daily Prophet is telling the truth." Admitting it was, somehow, not as joyful a moment as I would have wanted. I blamed it on my aching ribs. I'd have to figure out how I managed whatever it was I did and try not to hurt myself doing it again. I closed my eyes as I steadied myself, and a vision, brief, of glowing amber eyes – a cat's glowing, round eyes with a thousand shades of liquid gold and sticky amber that ended in deep, fathomless black pools that could have been the vastness of space itself or two chasms opening into the abyss; I felt safe looking into their unknowing and all-knowing depths – and of a tower, lightening-struck and bathed in sickly green light, into which the most heartless of laughs echoed from up the dark and winding stair. I might have fallen if I hadn't still been clutching the railing.

"I don't see why," Par began, hissing from my pocket.

"Your nestmatesss do not."

"Like your bond-mate."

Blinking somewhat frantically, I tried to regain my bearings. I had to have hit my head in addition to breaking my ribs, though I couldn't remember doing so. Couldn't remember anything I did that could have broken my ribs, either, but they were broken, so who knew? Maybe I had. Why else would strange dreams start to afflict me when I wasn't dreaming?

Hermione somehow managed to shush Ron long enough to get her words in. "You're marrying Professor Snape. Of your own volition. On Thursday next." I nodded feebly, pulling Paracelsus from my pocket and, as carefully as I could, lifting him to where he could wrap himself like a necklace around me. Then, exasperatedly, she continued, "Why did you tell us?"

I turned and looked at her slowly, giving her a look that seemed to say, "This." What I actually said was, "I love him, Hermione. He asked me to marry him and I said yes. But, for some reason, I didn't think you'd understand."

"Unders-" Ron began, to be shortly halted as Ginny stamped her foot upon his. The look on his face really made me wish Colin was there to take his picture, such an interesting mix between brief pain, deep disgust, and mild nausea was it. It reminded me why I'd feared to tell them in the first place. The rest of the world, who would rattle their spears at me, I could handle; Voldemort, who'd surely find a way to kill my baby if he knew, I could handle in my way; but my friends? I must be co-dependant or something like that because, for the life of me, I could not bring myself to seriously say all the things I wanted to say to Ron now, most of which were oaths I'd learned from Sus.

"Is this what you want, Harry?" Hermione looked me in the eyes. There was a small gash above her left eye from some flying crockery. This alone near broke my resolve. I could hear Severus nearby, still talking with the nurse; his mere presence calmed me more then I'd like to admit, "What you really want?"

Emphatically, "Yes." I tried not to clutch at my chest.

She sighed deeply, then grabbed my shoulders. "If it makes you happy, Éléonore, then I'm happy for you."

I could have burst with happiness, not just from the understanding I'd not expected but from her non-use of a computer cop-up name, but instead I settled for a heartfelt, "Sorry," and felt my eyes begin to tear. Merlin curse these hormones! I'd have hugged her if my ribs hadn't hurt so much…

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Cold late night so long ago, when I was not so strong you know  
A pretty man came to me – never seen eyes so blue

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They hurt now, as Bellatrix's iaceo tossed me into the large, gilded mirror and the brick wall behind it. It'd been three painful days before the comfrey plasters had healed my broken ribs, during which I, being me, still managed to catch the snitch out from under Draco's nose in the first Quidditch. What? It's not like I could have told them I managed to break my own bones – someone had tried to curse me with a necklace that had cost me my veteran Chaser; I wasn't about to tell anyone I was too injured to play a game, or that I was pregnant, not yet – and, besides, I wanted to play one game as captain before I had to lay down my broom for most the season, having grown rather to large to make loop-de-loops in the air comfortable. Not that it was comfortable, mind, that last practice where my team-mates were more then a little uncomfortable with the fact the Gryffindor captain would shortly be marrying the Head of Slytherin House, but, still, not matter how much Severus said that I should be careful and that if anything happened to me or the baby because I'd chosen to play a game, so help me Merlin I was going to never hear the end of it. I thought it was just because he wanted to make sure Slytherin won the cup this year and told him so; he'd the dignity, at least, to look somewhat sheepish at that. I feared the whole time I was flying that something bad would happen and it took most the fun out of it…

Still, I was not, however, looking forward to another three uncomfortable days of wearing comfrey plasters because Skele-Grow might hurt the baby. "Glantius," I shouted at my dear cousin Trixie from my pained place on the floor, and several dozen shards of silver-backed glass rose into the air and shot with lightening speed towards the Death Eater. Some missed, of course, but most plunged into her already torn and bloodied robes, creating new wounds there. One even managed to scratch at her face so that a line of blood clouded one eye; I'd already blown her bone-white mask to pieces and was bleeding atop them now.

"Ah, ickle baby's learned some new tricks," she said, almost pleased.

"I try," I told her in return, pulling myself to my bare feet (my slippers lost somewhere in the confusion) and feeling the glass crackle and snap under my feet as I cast a stupefy. It missed and left a burn mark in the wall behind my favourite lady Death Eater…

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I could not run away. It seemed we'd seen each other in a dream  
It seemed like he knew me. He looked right through me

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Severus and I were separated as we left our rooms. He went ahead, as screams pierced the air, caused no doubt by crucios on the inn's Muggle staff and the other guests. I darted down the hall in the opposite direction and, with a quick and quiet spell, stole into the room Alycone and Fleur's sister, Gabrielle were sharing. Both girls were curled up very tightly on the couch therein, wrapped in sheets stolen from their beds. Of Gabrielle, only ten, nothing could be seen more than the top of her silvery tresses and her grey, frightened eyes; Alycone, wand in hand, was only a little more visible. "You to okay?" I asked in the barest whisper. Both girls nodded the affirmative. "Come on, then; let's find the others." Luckily, the Vettriano, which Ron and Neville were sharing, was right across the hall, and I was able to get the girls across the hall without seeing anyone. It was a highly masculine room, the effects only somewhat marred by the fluffy pink robes Hermione and Ginny had pulled on over their nightclothes sitting on either side of the pale-faced Oliver. The Muggle-born had jumped to her feet as I swung the door open, the only one of the group of age, and nearly hit me with a compes – The Binding Curse – before seeing who it was. As I pulled my two charges quickly in behind me, Oliver too stood up and rushed to his sister, grabbing her tightly, and Gabrielle too, simply because she was latched onto the former.

Locking the door behind me, Hermione turned towards me, "Ginny and I just brought Oliver in here – the gardens were burning outside our window – and were about to go for the others, but we heard someone in the hall."

"Yeah, that was me." I was suddenly very conscious of the fact that, while the others were in sleep pants or long nightgowns, all I had on under my robe, which didn't even come to me knees, was a camisole and pair of knickers. And a pair of inn-issue slippers, which, once again, probably said more about the situation then mere words could. "Thanks for getting everyone here – I was worried I'd have to go all over looking for you guys. Still have Paracelsus?" I'd given Ginny the Runespoor to baby-sit on my wedding day; the Weasley held up her wrist and showed the three heads sleeping soundly around it. "Can you stay here with them-?"

"Stay?" cut in Neville, who had his wand in hand but looked very torn about needing to use it, "What about you?"

"All the Order's been called away – it's just us and Severus here," I explained, drawing my cotton robe more tightly around me though the night was far from cool, "and Hermione's the only one of age. You've just got to keep that lot," I inclined my head towards the Caudwells and Gabrielle, "safe. Contact the Ministry if you can: it's too far for a nuntius, but there's got to be a way."

Ron, who'd not said much to me, perhaps from shock, perhaps because we'd actually won our game against Slytherin (proving that I wasn't a traitor, in his eyes, to the Light), this past week, but he said something now. "But what about you, Harry?"

I would have said something about that infernal name if, well, there weren't Death Eaters nearly at our door. Instead, I merely shrugged. It'd never occurred to me that I shouldn't fight. My dear friends, however much they'd trained for war, had never been soldiers. I wasn't a soldier either, but a hero is but a glorified soldier, right? No, no, that wasn't right. But, whatever it was, that was me. "Death Eaters, here – it's kind of my thing. Vit la Lumière, avance Maquisard, You know."

I was already shutting the door behind me when I heard one of them – I'm not sure who – whisper, "Be careful."

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"Come on home, girl," he said with a smile. "You don't have to love me yet; let's get high awhile.

"But try to understand, try to understand. Try, try, try to understand I'm a magic man."

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"Severus?" I asked, pulling off my school uniform and pulling on something more casual. It was beginning to get uncomfortably tight; I'd have to get maternity clothes soon. Ick. Which meant, indubitably, Fleur would end up taking me on another shopping trip, which would be most certainly painful for a variety of reasons I don't even want to begin to think about if I don't have to. "How do like the name Claudia Séléné?"

From his laboratory, "Poppy said it's a girl, then?"

Buttoning my shirt, I headed out of the bedroom towards his voice, "No. I don't even think I want to know. I was just thinking. Maybe Lys or Pénélope or Eugène or Lucas even."

"Not Lucas – that was my great-grandfather's name."

"Okay then," as I finished the last button and looked up at him. "Any other forbidden family names?"

After a moment's thought, "William."

"No William Snape's either. I can do that. I'm rather attached to the name Claudia Séléné at the moment, though, so I hope it's a girl. I suppose I could think of a boy's name, but girls are so much easier, what with most guy names being stuffy or stupid. Who was the Emperor who ruled after Septimius Severus?"

"Caracalla."

Wrinkling my nose at that, "Not Severan names, then."

"Whatever you want," he told me, continuing with his work. Paracelsus was watching him from around one of the floating candelabra, hanging over the potion that would, shortly, be given to me to keep The Dark Lord out of my mind.

"You should," said Par from above.

"Call the nestling."

Sus finished, "Éléonore, Mère."

I looked at the Runespoor strangely, "Why would I do that?"

"You've many namesss, Mère, and hardly use any of them."

"Yesss, but Éléonore isss the one name I use."

"Which meansss it'sss special."

"Nestlingsss must have special namesss."

"Like Paracelsusssss."

I proceeded to ignore the snakes from there. "I'm heading up to the tower for a Q&A session; I don't suppose you want to knock me out to keep me from going?" I sighed at his look, "I thought not. Well, into every life some rain must fall. On the scale of things, I suppose this is only a spring shower, but still… See you tonight; if I don't show – well, don't suspect the worse, but something very unpleasant."

Quite blasé, "Will a swarm of locus do?"

"I was thinking something more along the lines of a sleepover, but that's pretty painful sounding as well." Resigned to this particular doom, having followed the earlier ones of Transfiguration (wherein I very nearly turned my whispering Parvati and Lavender, the latter of whom I would have considered doing this upon for the looks she was giving Ron when he was so totally "taken" by Hermione, for all the bickered, already having made plans to go to Slugy's Christmas Party together, into slugs – we were working on vertebrate to invertebrate transfiguration today) and Herbology (which included several Slytherins, who seemed determined to stare at me until they figured out why their Head of House might wish to have a relationship of this short with me) and the, of course, delightful conversation with Dumbledore (who seemed more shocked at the expediency then truly concerned about my marriage, and gave a speech with a great deal about how today was my day, and that my mountain was waiting, so I better be getting on my way, never mind the fact that he'd had McGonagall send me up to meet him after my Transfiguration class), I grabbed a large roll of parchment and headed up to the tower.

He snorted, but continued before I headed out the door, "This should be finished tomorrow morning."

I stopped and turned, setting the parchment down again and nearly clattered into the cauldron where the glorious protection ink, as clear as water but as frothing as the Black Lake before a storm. "In time for the full moon… Moonrise is at six-oh-five tomorrow."

"I'm not going to convince you to wait until the next full moon so we can test this first, am I?"

Laughing, "Since when have you been able to convince me of anything?" I remembered all his early protestations, and how I'd all but forced him to let himself love me. I turned instead from the magical pot and gave him a kiss on the cheek, and headed back for the door.

"The things I do for you, Éléonore."

I smiled at him one last time before leaving. "You can't help yourself. You love me too much."

"At least," he said dryly, glaring up at the Runespoor, who was now hissing out The Atomic Guillotine's breakthrough hit "Kill the Kangaroo," which, not being his usual love song, rather surprised me, "I know the feeling's mutual."

I grabbed the parchment from the countertop and bounded up the stairs with a smile on my face, then a grimace as I grabbed my side. Evil, strange magics throwing my friends about and breaking my ribs! I'm so going to find whatever magic did that, stop it, and keep it from doing it again. Ribs that cannot be healed right away are no fun. All the time I've broken bones, had basilisk teeth imbedded in my arm, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, they were nothing compared to this. I'm soooo glad I'm not a Muggle and have to deal with this all the time. But, then again, if I was a Muggle I probably wouldn't hurt myself all the time. Nonetheless, I made it up to the tower without incident and, luckily, knew the password.

The common room quieted as I entered. It was after dinner, most people there doing homework or chatting lazily by the fire as I had done in other days, maybe better days, when Voldemort wasn't reborn and I'd not known of the prophesy that tied to that of my parents' killer, my inevitable murderer or victim. Maybe I should call my child Destinée or Marvelle or whatever their masculines were, if that's what they wanted from me. In silence, I watched all of my friends and housemates, people I'd known for years, who'd called me a heroine when I stood against Umbridge the Destroyer and a wonder when I won on the pitch and a cheat when my name, unbidden, poured forth from a wooden goblet filled with blue fire and a whore when a thoughtless joke went too far and a brilliant when I was what they wanted. And now, what were they calling me behind my back, when they thought I couldn't hear them? I didn't yet know. Whispers of "Imperious" and "Traitor" and, most devastatingly for a Gryffindor, "Slytherin," undoubtedly would soon follow, only heightened after Fleur, one weekend, discovered my "condition" and resolved to provide me with the proper clothing for it. Ah, Fleur – she, like Tonks, was predictable in her own way. The thought of Tonks, as I was pinning up, the parchment to the bulletin board that took up most of the space between two windows on one wall, caused me to nearly smile with the devilish thought of seeing that my favourite werewolf and metamorphmagus were "forced" into sharing one of the most romantic rooms available, whichever the front desk said was the best. I'd so much to this coming week – get in contact with Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons and finalize the room assignments (and hope the fifteen rooms I'd booked, by mail, along with the Belle Epoch room, would be enough), the menu, the flowers, and whatever else needed finalizing; try to figure out which one of my robes I wanted to wear for the ceremony; do all my homework, for this weekend and next week, so I'd not have to worry about it after said ceremony; find a way to make sure whoever Voldemort had trying to kill me with opal necklaces et al didn't succeed in the next seven days; and, in general, find a way to, without inciting my own murder, tell all of those who watched so dearly my life the truth of it though I shouldn't have to explain to them anything, but the life of a hero, or whatever it was I was, is one of glass and cameras however much I like to pretend otherwise, and, while I might have found safety in the dungeon rooms of the person who'd taken me in when I was scarred and hurt and afraid, not even the solid stone and earth of underground sanctuaries could hold up to that unfaltering stare forever, - I really didn't want to have to do this. But I had to, or else I might go mad with the whisperings.

I finished pinning the giant parchment – an overblown copy of the article, from which I'd stricken all the lies and falsehoods, and highlighted the most salient parts – and turned to face my accusers…

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Winter nights we sang in tune; played inside the months of moon  
Never think of never. Let this spell last forever

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I knew, even as I cast it, that stupefies weren't going to cut it here. I rushed at her, shouting, "Culteris!" as I went, but a judicious use of shield and running backward kept her from becoming anything but slightly winded. Still, it drew her away from the Vettriano, where my friends were, and keeping them apart was a good thing.

"The Dark Lord," she said, blasting a hole through a wall on the left side into a room of dark reds and darker blacks and dashing through it, "is quite interested to know why the so-called Chosen One," (this part she snarled, her lips curling in such a way as to show the monstrosities that, even amongst the British, were her teeth), "would marry one of his Inner Circle."

"Velleity," I said, casting a proficio around me to protect myself from the artafyrus I'd cast on the furniture she'd animated to attack me while speaking. "That and he's quite dishy."

Trixie gave a snort of derision as she coughed amongst the smoke and dashed through the open French doors. Leaping backwards from the fames, she dashed to the highest part in the gardens outside she could reach – at this moment, a small, round table on a stone patio, surrounded by arms of junipers and a mat of dark grass from which the heads of yellow and burgundy asters rose on spindly stems; trailing comforters and curtains, pulled out of place by the animalised furniture, flailed and smouldered below her – and snarled, "Adustus. Torqueo. Adustus," at me from across the line of burning, still semi-animated and writhing furniture. My shield held, but I felt it crackle and groan under the strain. It was too large extinguish and I couldn't just go around, not when I could loose this woman, this torturer of innocents, and allow her the chance to hurt others more.

So, strengthening my shield, I took the first option that came to mind and, ran through the line of fire, jumping up onto the leather cushions of a small settee that puffed a greasy, flesh-like smell as I landed that made me gag and almost loose my shield. As it was, when I hopped over the low back of the couch, my bare feet, already cut by slivers of mirror that were, no doubt, still embedded therein, felt raw and singed.

I cast a freezing charm at her, but Trixie swayed out of the way so that ice crystals formed on the leaves of the tree above the Death Eater, escaping my spell but causing the table on which she stood to teeter and crash. "Why are you here, Trixie? Angry you didn't get an invitation? What can I say, just because you're my cousin, of sorts, doesn't mean I'd overlook the fact that you tried to kill me and make you a bridesmaid. Maybe if you were younger and prettier – Azkaban did awful things to your skin – or maybe if I'd a domineering mother-in-law planning things," I ducked a demitimens – the Mindbender Hex – of brilliant orange, and sent a confringo her way for the trouble. It shattered the narrow trunk of the tree-standard she stood beside, but the iaceo that soon followed caught her perfectly, slamming her into another, "but I don't, so… expelliarmus."

Dazed by the blow the giant planter had given her, Bellatrix was unable to keep hold of her wand – long and narrow, apparently of blackthorn – and it flew willingly into my hand. Raising one of my bared legs, I snapped the sick and twisted thing over my knee – and, yes, it hurt horribly, but it needed to be done. I'd probably have a red mark for days. I mean, really. This was my honeymoon. Tomorrow, simply because today was Thursday, was Friday and, like our after-school-hours wedding might indicate, was not, as we'd be back in school – me learning, him teaching. People weren't supposed to get cut up and cursed at or burned on their honeymoons – unless, of course, that was their thing – and this was gong to be fun to heal from afterwards, I can already see. Presuming I live. I generally do – presume, that is.

I walked over to the woman, older than my parents would be, older than Sirius and my Severus and Remus, who was struggling to her feet, eyes obviously streaming, the world spinning around her because of my lucky curse and the fortuitous tree behind her. This woman was responsible for so much death and destruction… and, yet, so was I. Because I lived fifteen years (to the day) ago, Voldemort had been reborn. Because Voldemort was reborn, his Death Eaters walked again. Because they walked, innocents died. A=D, or something of that sort. I wondered, not idly, if it was my fate to become this woman to destroy her. Shrugging this off, I was only a foot or so from this Black scion when, with gravelly determination, she struggled to her hands and knees in attempt to stand.

Shoeless, and admittedly not the strongest, I walked, quite calmly, up to this woman with dark Black hair and the straight Black nose and the haunted look of Blacks' who'd spent too long in Azkaban and kicked her in the stomach. Hard enough to be felt in my already burned and battered feet, and in her coward's stomach as she fell back to the ground. "Bitch." She struggled to her feet again, and, with the same foot, I kicked her once more. "I hate you." Trixie rose to her knees, cradling one arm to her side as she sent a mouthful of bloodied spittle in my direction. The black-and-red furniture continued to burn, with a slight sickening squeal, in the room behind us. I kicked at her again-

Her hand caught my ankle, twisting me around. I went sprawling on the ground for the nth time that night, and was seriously getting tired of it. My head felt like it'd cracked open, but, when I pulled my self as best I could upright, I couldn't see my brains spilling out of my skull (or my wand nearby, having flown from my hand as I crashed), and so, with little other thought, scrambled to my feet, ignoring the throb in the back of my head…

I'd never seen the stars above look as beautiful as they did then, bathed in the light of a nearly-full moon and veiled with the smoke of paradise burning…

Trixie was aiming for something nearby– I figured it to be my wand – as she rushed, unsteadily, to a spot to my right. I couldn't even see what she was looking at, so I did the next best thing, and did distinctly ungrateful tackle that brought both of us tumbling to the ground. For a moment, we were both dazed. Then she turned and pinned me beneath her, our legs a tangle, trying to hold me down with one hand as she reached for my want with the other. I don't know how I managed it – maybe the same was I managed to break my own ribs, which, by the way, were now achingly painful and choking me more then this ineffective thing Trixie was doing, whatever you called it – but, somehow, I was able to punch her hard enough to make her loose her grip – most likely from surprise – and scuttle out from under her.

"What are you going to do?" Bellatrix asked, her voice somewhat whistling as she spat out her words, one by one, as if coherency took effort. Maybe she'd jarred a tooth, or something or other, when she'd been thrown by my hand time and time again to the ground, "kill me? Well, I've got news for you, little Harry Potter," her voice grew stronger, more lucid, "Bellatrix Lestrange is not going to be killed by a little half-blood tramp! You think with luck and a few odd spells you can destroy me? Destroy us! We are everywhere – and we are strong, stronger then you or that bird-brained twit Dumbledore can imagine. You think you've cost us something, taking Snape from our ranks? The Dark Lord has known of his treachery since before you were born, harlot, and has servants in the very walls of your beloved Hogwarts. None can stop The Dark Lord's rise!" Perhaps I'd have been more impressed by her campaign spiel if she'd not been bleeding and only up on one knee as she gave it. It's unlikely though, and so I did the only thinking thing I could do before making a lunge for my wand: I corrected her.

"My name is Éléonore. Éléonore Snape."

The Death Eater saw what I was going to do a moment before I did it, and it was all I could do to hope and pray and whatever else there was one could do that I would reach my wand, my holly-and-phoenix wand, before she could, because I knew as surely as I did anything else that whatever spell she would cast from it would not be pleasant, and if she chose not to kill me it would only be so Voldemort could do so himself.

I swear, I know what people say. I've read hundreds, if not thousands, of books. I have heard the words of sages and mages, and everyone else for that matter. I know they say, in their hallowed halls, about killing. But, the fact of the matter is, I was not going to die, not when things were finally working out for me, not today, not ever, and the mere fact that she was going to try to hurt me – and, therefore, my baby – was enough to incense me beyond reason. There were other spells I could have cast, other Dark, but still lesser, spells.

I reached my wand first and shoved the hand that tried to pull it from mine, with nails ragged and dirt-encrusted and what might have been dried blood beneath, away. I was stretched fully, face down, on the stone patio, wand at the end of my outstretched arm, the murderess beside me.

I twisted to face her and brought my wand to bear.

I spoke the curse:

"Advada Kedavara!"

And Bellatrix Lestrange, favourite of Lord Voldemort and scion of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black, went blank-faced and cold with death…

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Summer over passed to fall; tried to realize it all  
Mama says she's worried, growing up in a hurry

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"I don't know 'ow you could do this to me," Fleur bemoaned, spreading a wealthy of sticky-noted, high-gloss wedding magazines with French names across one of the wooden benches inside the Gryffindor girls' locker room before the game that Saturday morning. She wore an ice blue sundress with matching purse, an outfit that only one such as she could fail to mar by the two large canvas tote bags she carried with it. The magazines had come from one of these, and were shortly joined by colour swatches, handwriting samples, wedding service directories, a much-thumbed thesaurus, several yards of very similar tulle, and a measuring tape. "What am I supposed to accomplish with only a week to prepare?"

Ginny and Demelza were changing off to the side, while I, trying and largely failing to unknot my shoes (a spell keeping them knotted, I'm sure), was left to deal with Fleur all by myself. Well, not all by myself.

"She already got Sevie to pop the question," Tonks, looking like a crimson-and-gold candy-cane, replied from where she leaned against the lockers. "I think the work's half-done."

With a yank, I pulled off my shoe and threw it at the auror, giggling as she tried to dodge it and managed to trip over it instead. "Shouldn't you be doing something useful like, I dunno, working? Or helping me?"

"As far as the Ministry is concerned, I'm looking for new evidence of trolls in the West Country; Shacklebolt worked it out for me: Dumbledore wants someone watching out for you, at least for the next week. Thinks this news of you marrying Sevie dearest might cause some problems, like people wanting you dead more then usual."

I snorted, then threw my other shoe at her for good measure before going past her to my locker. "Call him that again, and I'll tell him you're calling him 'Sevie' now."

She raised her hands in defeat and went to the pile of cake samples balanced unsteadily atop the magazines. "You going to eat this?" I shook my head, pulling my jersey on as best I could without screaming in pain and unbuttoning my shirt underneath it, so as not to show the comfrey plasters, which would no doubt lead to questions I didn't want to have to answer. I heard a smack land on someone's hand.

"Yes, Alexandrie-Margaux is going to be eating these. With not even a week, she 'as to choose a cake, a colour combination, and invitations before 'eading out onto that field if anything's going to be finished on time!"

"Er," I said, wanting to go, "Arg!" instead from the way my shoulders did not like the way they had to move to get into the uniform's sleeves, "I'm pretty sure the inn's providing the cake." I'd expect it, for thirteen thousand galleons. "And dinner afterwards. We booked fifteen rooms, so those parts are taken care of too." Should I mention that that part was another twenty-two hundred galleons? I mean, think of the shoes you need for one hundred galleon plus a night rooms. I'm sure grasped the whatever-was-needed, this being the marriage of the multimillionaire Earl Dover (heir of the Prince fortune, et cetera et cetera et cetera) and myself, the multimillionairess Baronne de Calais (Girl-Who-Lived, Triwizard Champion, heiress to the Potier fortune, et cetera et cetera et cetera) and covered in both Royalty and Star and Stave, as well as every other remotely interested paper for pretty much everywhere I'd ever heard of. Ari had sent me a letter the night before saying that she was, primarily, happy for us but that if we ever tried something like this again without warning her first, we'd have hell to pay, and that I better be happy that she'd "stock photos" from the summer and, if I wanted new ones (and even if I didn't) I'd have to put up with Colin stalking me for two galleons an hour until he'd some good pictures of me to send off the papers with her damage control. Anyway, whether it was the whole "Dover/Calais," "teacher/student," or "former Death Eater/the Chosen One" angle, it was hot news, and it was really reminding me of all the other reasons besides the whole let's-not-encourage-Voldemort-to-try-to-kill-anyone-(specifically-me) angle I'd advocated before.

Taking a garishly orange cake box from Fleur, she conjured what appeared to be a plastic Spork, and dug in. "See, Ely's got it handled. Ick, carrot cake. Who'd want a carrot cake at a wedding, honestly, Fleur-flower? I worry about you sometimes."

"Call me 'Fleur-flower' again, Nymphadora, and I will tell Monsieur Remus what you told me ab-"

"You wouldn't dare," the witch in love with said werewolf exclaimed, her Spork and a square of green-iced devil's food cake fell to the ground.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait!" I all but shouted, "What did she say about Remus?"

Tonks ignored me completely, "Am I the only one who is seriously weirded out by the fact that she just called by pseudo-boyfriend 'mister'?"

"Well, she told me she 'ad this dream where-"

"Oooookay, enough of that-"

I knelt to strap on my leg guards, "I was listening–"

"And now, Ely darling, you're not."

"Nymphadora's right. We must choose a colour scheme-"

I pouted at them. "I want to hear about Tonks's dream."

From the corner, together, Ginny and Demelza called from the corner where they were waiting for me still, "We don't!"

"You never let me have any fun." I picked up my Firebolt and headed for the door.

"But we still 'ave not decided on a colour scheme. There are so many options. Eggplant, cornflower, and magenta are very 'in' this season. But there's also crimson-and-cloud, or young asparagus with-"

Opening the door to the pitch, I rushed outside to my freedom, ignoring Fleur's protestations…

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"Come on home, girl," Mama cried on the phone.

"Too soon to lose my baby yet; my girl should be at home!"

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The bedroom was a sea of candles red, black, and silver.

"I would, at this moment, like to reiterate my vehement opposition to this."

"Your opposition is so noted, but," I added, "you might have wanted to make your point clearer before making the potion for me in the first place."

He set down the vial that contained the ink that looked like water. "I believe I mentioned something at the time about that."

Moving to stand on my toes, I kissed him on the lips, soft and strong. "Yes, yes you did." I placed my arms around his neck, "but we decided risking a little bit of insanity was worth the price of keeping Voldemort out of my head. A wicked looking tattoo wouldn't be too bad either."

"Tattoos are, in my opinion, rarely a good idea when magic is involved."

I smiled at him. "Have I ever told you how much of a prude you can be?"

He raised an eyebrow, "Not in a few days, no." Severus's features then turned to one of mild disappointment. "Nor have I told you how reckless you are in some time. Something must be slipping."

"Love makes you do strange things," I told him, slipping away. "Besides, it's either this, or I tell you about the insanity going on around me. I mean, have you ever seen people planning for a wedding? Fleur is in complete overdrive, and Tonks is following her around like it's the greatest show on earth, my suffering. Or I could talk about what idiotic thing Ron's done to mess things up with Hermi-"

"Miss Delacour always struck me as the overzealous type."

Snorting, "And you aren't?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." The look in his eyes, however, indicated he did.

"I seem to recall a certain someone and an article in Potions Monthly."

Fervently, "You can hardly blame me, Éléonore, for finding the logical fallacy in-" He braked and spun his thoughts on me. "And I suppose you are free from all zealotry?"

I breathed on my nails and brushed them on my dressing gown, "Of course!" barely managing the words before sitting on the edge of the bed in pained laughter.

Almost immediately, he knelt down beside me. "I should have known when you said you were felling better you weren't telling me the full truth."

"What can I say? I learned from the best," I wheezed. Evil, evil, unexplainable magical bursts that can break ribs from inside you. Evil, never mind what Severus said about hormones and magic and whatnot. I didn't like it.

He rolled his eyes at me now, he very clearly and without doubt told me, "Slytherin House would have eaten you alive." I wasn't as certain, but I let it pass and lay back instead.

"Let's just get this over with – we don't want the candles burning out on us now, do we?"

Rolling his eyes again, he responded drolly, "They're charmed never to melt."

"The poor chandlers. Still, works well for us." I scooted back on the bed and sprawled there, breathing shallowly.

And, with that, he began.

"Omini," Severus began in his deep, rich voice. The candle smoke, which had been floating and flickering as smoke normally did, began to bend and weave over the bed, decidedly leaning towards me from the corners of the room. I leaned my head back languidly and breathed in the scents… catnip, camomile, hibiscus… I had read so many stuffy old books, I hoped it worked, "animi dormiendorum exsuscitate cum motis celeribusque lentis, sursisque deorsis, introrisque externis. Nunc tripudiis nobis vita saltate." Beleive it or not, I translated the spell into Latin myself. Awaken now all sleeping beings with movements fast and slow, upwards and downwards, inwards and out, it translated. Dance with us now in the dance of life.

He took the vial of clear, watery ink and, with a movement that, had it not been a semi-occult ritual, would have lead to very different things, he pulled back the hem of my robe and lifted my camisole enough to reveal my navel. Why the navel, you ask? It was the centre of the body, the tie to the magical centre… various things that brought up annoyingly long words like omphaloskepsis and… well, that was the main one. He, still chanting, or casting, or whatever you'd like to call it, poured the potion into my umbilicus, "Huc loco, a his verbis consecravit," it was surprisingly warm and viscous where it touched me, making me feel chill where it didn't, "hac se ipsi pandit, et ipsum tuae semitae datis." In this place, made holy by these words, this one opens herself to you, and gives herself to your path.

The ink felt warm and viscous where it touched me. "Ea oculis cernitis," Severus continued. See with her eyes. I shuddered as the potion, now (as I would later find out) shining as if the moon, several stories above us, was hitting it. "Ea osibus spiratis," Breathe with her mouth. "Se tui magica sumit," Make her magic yours. Almost spasmodically, I twitched as the ink seeped into my skin. "Te sibi magica sumis," Make your magic hers.

My eyes, while open wide, could suddenly see only blackness. I heard the growl of something – something dark and feline – and the rush of padded, clawed feet on a bed of pine needles. "Ea te anima sumitis," my fiancé said, his voice growing hoarser as the power washed through him. Semi-occult rituals, like full ones, were not exactly the best things to practice if you weren't a skilled, well-trained practitioner. This one, a mix between protective spell, amulet blessing, and sacred tattooing, leaned more towards the semi then the occult, but the danger was still there. Especially if I'd gotten it wrong. I heard the rush of warm summer breezes and the soft intake of breath that wasn't my own, and thought I'd done something most defiantly wrong. "Eam te anima sumitis." A heartbeat now, thrumming in tune to mine, joined the sounds I shouldn't have been hearing, and I would have screamed for him to stop if I a) could and, b) thought it would do any good. What dark force had we unleashed? Why hadn't I listened to Severus? Make her magic yours. Make your magic hers.

I felt my head lolling back, my back arching à la petite mort. I felt my mouth opening, and rather then a gasp, as he continued, "Tecum eam cunctum sumitis," a hint of a roar escaped me instead. It was a worse idea to stop in the middle of (semi)occult rituals then to let them come to their unwelcome conclusions… and, even in the midst of all this, I knew he wanted to – stop, that is.

"Tecum eam cunctum sumitis," he said one last time. Make her one with you. And I saw only blackness…

No, that was wrong. It was dark yes, as if I stood, looking out from the depths of a deep pine forest. Between the trunks, wide and flaky with age, the strangest light poured… Golden, late-summer light flickered my way. It looked like a field of ripe wheat, with heavy heads swaying in a gentle breeze. A handful of children played there, some with vibrant red heads, others with darkest of dark black. "Mac," the oldest, though still too young for Hogwarts, called, bending down to lift up a small boy, "Y'can't just wander off like that. What'd Mum say if we lost you?" She was dark haired, with my eyes and his nose…

"Sor-ry," the boy called Mac told her, and they ran to join the others.

"Ring around the rosy," they sung, grabbing hands and spinning in a circle, "a pocketful of posies. Ashes, ashes – we all fall down!" and down they tumbled into the rich field, all ten of them, laughing and giggling all around…

The scene changed. Now it wasn't golden light that entered, but pale and flickering, as if from a hundred candles – this room I knew. It was the bedroom I shared with Severus; dare I call it our room? I could see myself, spasming on the bed, the pale silver ink flowing under my skin, down my belly, and onto my right thigh. Severus was trying, futilely, to still my convulsions. "Éléonore!" he held my shoulders and shouted at me. "Éléonore! Say something! Please, please, say something…" I'd rarely seen him look so worried. It both touched and scared me. I wanted to reassure him, to tell him everything was fine, even if that was a lie – I don't know what was going on, not really, but I still wanted to tell him that I was going to be fine so he wouldn't worry so much, or press his lips to my forehead like he was doing now, which he only did when he was truly panicked.

And then the scene shifted again, and the light was pale again, like moonlight filtered through wavy glass. It was an old, old house I could tell, despite the paint job and pink-chequered curtains. There was a woman just out of sight, veiled in shadows, singing a lullaby – not well, mind, but soft and sweetly, "…close your eyes. Mother's right here beside you. I'll protect you from harm, you'll wake in my arms; guardian angels are near. So sleep on, with no fear; guardian angels are near…"As she sang, the woman came into view, and, if I could, I would have gasped. I had seen this woman, in pictures. I knew her. It was my mother; and she was rocking baby me in her arms… "Lullaby, and sleep tight," she sang to me, "Hush! My darling is sleeping on his sheets white as cream with his head full of dreams." Slowly, slowly, she set me down in the cradle beneath the window bathed in moonlight. I, even from my forest vantage point, felt awash in the love. Not what I felt when Severus held me – no, it was something quite different then that which, at last, I was familiar with – but something else. I wished I could have grown up knowing it, so I might learn its name. "When the sky's bright with dawn, she'll wake in the morning…"

It began to flicker again, quite against my will, to something farther back… to something that, while seeming utterly familiar, was nothing I'd ever seen with my waking eyes… I saw the tower bathed in the green light of death, and a face this time – Draco's face – pale and queasily victorious, as he pointed his wand towards the railing I could not immediately see… Before it could form too clearly between the trunks of the ancient pines, a growl caused me to do a one-eighty and take in the large black jaguar which, with amber eyes, was staring intently at me.

I am Niynhi, it said without speaking, I protect you.

And I woke up…

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"But try to understand, try to understand, try, try, try to understand.

"He's a magic man, Mama. He's a magic man."

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The night sky was so perfect, it was hard to tear away from it as I lay there, panting with pain and exhaustion, beside the corpse of the woman I'd killed. One minute, two? I don't know how long I stayed there, unmoving and unmovable. In the distance, I could hear the roar of flames and the shouted spells of other, not-dead Death Eaters.

"Rest is for the weary," I mumbled, pulling myself to my feet. The hem of my robe had risen, allowing moonlight to hit the faint, silvery jaguar tattoo down my outer thigh to glow ethereally. "Sleep is for the dead."

There were still so many left to fight…

But not here. By the time I'd pandered to the main house, Severus had taken care of those there – all just junior, untrained Death Eaters who had probably been his students just a year or two before. I ran as best I could to him, burying myself in his arms without thought to the aurors who were, rather then carting those he'd captured off, paying rather too much attention to us as they apparated in from parts unknown. "I want to go home," I told him, trying not to sob.

"We must make sure your friends are safe first; I thought I saw Bella-"

"They're in the Vettriano," I mumbled softly, "and I took care of Trixie."

He made a noise of understanding then, looking at me more clearly, lifted me off my feet and summarily took me back to the garden house. "Let's get your friends."

I rested, now in tears, against his shoulder. I barely noticed our arrival or his placing of me on the bed while he ascertained everyone else was alive.

"What's wrong with-?" one began.

My husband – and I was not so out of it not to feel a bit of inward thrill at the thought – replied gruffly, "She killed Bellatrix Lestrange."

I heard the sound of someone – Neville, I presumed, though I couldn't be sure – sinking into a chair. Ron, full of fire, "But that's a good thing. She was evil. She deserved to die."

"Perhaps. Perhaps Bellatrix was truly a monster with no chance of redemption, but Éléonore would be equally so if killing did not affect her so. The portkey's ready."

It was a very quiet group that arrived in the Hogwarts hospital wing a moment later.

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"Come on home, girl," he said with a smile. "I cast my spell of love on you, a woman from a child!  
"But try to understand, try to understand. I'm a magic man!"


	23. In Which I Have Revelations

I woke up to shouting, blearily trying to make sense of where I was and what was going on around me.

"What do you mean she's pregnant?" That was Sirius, I was fairly sure. But what was Sirius doing at Hogwarts? I was fairly certain I was at Hogwarts. But maybe I wasn't. Maybe I had died and not Bellatrix, and this was Hell – I was fairly certain, if there was a destination we were sent after death, it would be that one. But, again, if this was Hell, why was Sirius in it? Had he died too? I hoped not. He didn't deserve Hell. He'd been so good to me… Plus he had twelve years of incarceration-while-innocent to his name, which was bound to earn him some wiggle-room with the to-eternally-torment-or-not decision makers. "How is that possible?"

Severus, in the same tone he used for telling students how stupid their answers were (no, just because I married the guy didn't mean I was going to ignore his faults. I mean, if gene therapy was even possible for the Prince nose…), he explained rather snidely, "Occasionally, as the result of several incontrollable factors, an oocyte will-"

Both men, I could see, had the look of wizards recently healed, which is to say dirtied and bloodied, but without any visible injuries. I envied them that. No, not me. Me, all because I happen to be pregnant, have to suffer through the whole Muggle way of healing. As a wedding present, I'll have to ask Severus to work out a Skle-grow for us less fortunate ones. "You know what I mean, you literal ponce. What I want to know is how you had the nerve to touch my daughter – your student-"

"Black," he said, his voice more fuelled with anger than I'd ever heard and seeming to draw closer, until he stood by my bed, "I want to make it perfectly clear to you that, at this moment, the only reason you're not a jumble of curses is my respect for the love Éléonore has for you. If it assuages you at all, I proposed to her before I knew she was pregnant, and that, regardless, it was Éléonore's wish-"

I could see, from my position on the bed – which, of course, no one had noticed I was awake, being too busy fighting over my honour or something stupid like that, when they should be fighting our enemies. Voldemort was the villain here, not Severus. "She is sixteen-god-damn-years-old girl, not some pureblood baby machine!"

Rather than raise fists, he lowered them onto my bed and searched, for a moment, for my hand before clasping it. I squeezed it back and hoped he took strength in it as I used it to pull myself upright. "It was my choice," I coughed, figuring that at least two of my ribs were broken from the pain of it, "to keep the baby. And everything leading up to it. So, how badly hurt am I?"

"You'll have to wear the comfrey plasters again – only two ribs this time," he said, turning to look at me, pulling up a chair with his foot and sinking to my eye level with one fluid motion. "You have a twisted ankle as well. Poppy says your cuts and contusions should be fully healed by morning."

I gave a tight smile and let myself lay back down. Sitting hurt too much to honestly consider it at the moment. "Where's everybody?"

"Back in their dorms, I believe, and Headquarters where appropriate. No one else was so hurt as to require overnight care."

Absently, staring at the ceiling of the hospital wing, of which I'd counted every ceiling tile and intimately knew every crack in the paint and plaster, "That's good."

My husband – another thrill, however immature it was, coursed through me at this thought – rubbed his thumb along the tender skin of my hand, and told me sarcastically, "Winding up in the infirmary on our honeymoon, Éléonore, is only going to further damage to my reputation."

Snorting at that only hurt, while it caused Sirius, who'd been watching our exchange rather impatiently, to burst, "You're pregnant."

"I know." I thought I heard Severus trying not to laugh, but I couldn't be sure. I'm sure it sounded amusing to him. "Where's Paracelsus?"

"Last I saw, with Miss Granger."

Sirius wouldn't drop it so easily – of course, having just discovered the teenage orphan daughter of his best friend, whose wedding he'd attended against his will not even half-a-day earlier, was pregnant and, thusly, as he'd adopted said teenage bride, making him shortly a grandfather of sorts – and continued in his fury, "How long?"

My head wasn't in the spot to figure out to figure out if he meant, "How long have you known you were pregnant and failed to tell me, your adoptive father who only wants the best for you and broke out of Azkaban, went into hiding from the British government for two-and-a-half years, and spent the annual gross domestic product several smaller third world countries retaining a law firm to prove myself innocent all so that I could take you in from your beastly aunt and uncle and give you the home I'm not sure now you deserve?" or "How long until this child – which I've yet to decide to love for your sake and that of your parents or hate because it is partly Snivillus's and that is something, however much you claim to love him, I won't ever be able to look past – forces itself into the world?" or even "How long until you are healed enough that I can throttle you, because it is something I'd very much like to do before I hand you over to the judges of common sense, because, in case you've forgotten, you're just a sixteen-year-old girl no matter what words Dumbledore said and what papers you might have signed, because you still have a year-and-a-half of school left and marriage is one thing, which I don't care for in the least but have let you go through with because there was no way I could stop you and it made you happy, but a baby is completely other – how on earth are you going to finish school, stop Voldemort, and take care of a baby? Were you even thinking…?" so I just said, "I'm due March 27," and braced myself for whatever would come. Where was Madam Pomprey with the dreaded comfrey plasters? Everything hurt, and I really didn't like all this fighting. If fighting had to happen, it should be in a nice courtroom where we're all wearing Armani suits and arguing like nice, civilized people. That was my personal preference, at least.

I'm really going to honestly have to think about my future now. I mean, Merlin, I'm Mrs. Snape now. God, that was strange. I mean, it's one thing to think to dream about marrying the love of your life and living happily ever after with him, but the whole "happily ever after" part is like so much harder. I mean, how do you live happily? I think a key part of that, I think, is what makes me happy? Well, Severus makes me happy, but there are only so many hours in a day one can spend basking in Severus's presence, and, plus, his whole potions obsession-thing was a little boring. Not to say I don't enjoy the merits of a good potion – hello, that whole protective tattoo ink, my creation. Lots of research, lots of wonderful nights with duty old books when I'd rather be reading, I don't know, Dostoevsky or Vonnegut or Irving, I don't know, Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss would have been soooo much easier than Lord Lucas Emery-Gershman or Lecquetus the Monk, who, frankly, spoke entirely too much about the monetary garden for a book supposedly on the rehabilitation of the mentally ill. Maybe I should become a tattoo artist. I can practically guarantee Severus would be the only Potions Master in Britain married to one of those.

I laughed at this thought then stopped abruptly, both because, firstly, it really hurt to laugh and, secondly, because my timing was impeccably inappropriate as Sirius and Severus were in the middle of another argument, having something, from what little I overheard, to do with how Sirius couldn't understand any emotion other than what madness might bring and Severus was a Death Eater with limited morality and a penchant for ephebophilia. "Er, sorry," I told them, and went back to my thoughts.

I wasn't a very good artist though, and most people probably weren't willing to go on faith that the potion would turn up something they could live with. I mean, what if their guardian spirit was a toad or something? Who'd want a tattoo of a toad? Or a bison? Sure, I'm sure bison have wonderful qualities worthy of using to protect people, but a tattoo of bison for the rest of your life?

I do like law though. And teaching. Teaching was nice. Maybe now I'm the wife of the DADA professor I might have the pull to start the DA again. Legally. I've missed it. And, plus, if I'm not going to be having Quidditch practice to occupy me soon. Well, I suppose there's the whole training part of Quidditch practise I can still oversee, but still, now that all this stress of the wedding and hiding the wedding and hiding the pregnancy and whatnot, I can see my life becoming very boring in the future while I grow bigger and bigger.

That's not something I've honestly taken a good hard thought about. My future, I mean. I know I'm going to get bigger. That tends to happen when one is pregnant, so I hear. That part of things doesn't really bug me. It's the future. I mean, hello, what kind of world arm I bringing this child into – I'm a murderer. Trice over. Granted, no one can fault me for it. No one, possibly not even her husband, is going to cry over Bellatrix Lestrange. Voldemort might be very angry, but he wouldn't cry or anything. I might be the only one sorry Trixie dearest was dead, and that was only because I had to do the killing myself.

Sirius would probably want to throw a party. I'd have to arrange to floo over that day and cook for him, 'cause Merlin knew that if we let him cook half the Order would be down for the count with food poisoning, and if Tonks was ever going to get Remus to sleep with her (a moment of gross at that, however much Tonks was my friend and I wanted them both to be happy, Remus had still been my professor)… and then, of course, I remembered Remus was like two months younger than Severus and proceeded to try to forget the whole thing. So I listened into the conversation, heard an, "…allow this to happen," and a, "Quite simply…" that didn't interest me in the least.

Where was Madam Pomprey when you needed her?

Oh well, I had baby names to think of. I mean, babies needed names, or so I'd heard, and I'd no idea if it was going to be a he or a she or if I wanted to still with the family history of French names as I was, apparently, French to some degree, or if I wanted something English. Or something else. I mean, there're so many names. There's Ambrose and Bryon and Carolas and Christophe and Claude and, Merlin, there were a lot of "C" names.

Sea… I'd never been to the sea. Any of them. As soon as this whole Voldemort thing was over, I'd have to have Severus take the baby and I to the sea. Assuming we all didn't die before then. I really hope we don't die.

I think I hit my head. Things are making so little sense. I mean, there's a panther in y head that doesn't say a word to me, weird dreams of Severus and someone who quite possibly might be our son, and random thoughts of French names that, to be truthful, I didn't even like. Claudia Séléné I liked. Maybe even Claudia-Éléonore Séléné.

Focus. Got to focus. I tried foolishly to sit up again and saw Madam Pomprey come through the curtains. And I passed out, gratefully, from the pain.

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"…You won't see the Once-ler," Hermione read. "Don't knock at his door. He stays in his Lerkim on top of his store."

I heard Paracelsus confusedly hiss, "What?" as I struggled to remember where I was and why I felt such a heavy, sticky weight on my chest.

"Isss a?" Oh, yes, broken ribs. But how had I gotten those?

"'Lerkim'?" Lestrange. I'd killed Trixie last night. Some honeymoon. I felt icky all over.

Hermione, of course, couldn't understand my Runespoor, but she probably understood the general gist or the direction the heads were looking, for she shortly said, "It's a made up word, but it means it's the place where the Once-ler hides from the world." I was sort of at a loss for why my best friend might be reading Dr. Seuss to a three-headed snake at my beside, but was relatively sure that, if she was trying to teach it to read (Merlin forbid!) she'd have started with Green Eggs and Ham, not The Lorax, which brings up the whole other question of where she'd found a Muggle children's book to read to my talking and oft-singing snake in the first place. It hurt my head to think too hard on, "He lurks in his Lerkim, cold under the roof, where he makes his own clothes out of miff-muffered moof. And on special dank midnights in August, he peeks out of the shutters and sometimes he speaks and tells how the Lorax was lifted away. He'll tell you, perhaps… if you're willing to pay."

I opened my eyes, blearily, to the sound of turning pages. The book closes and is placed on my beside table. I see a folded newspaper there, the headline

Bellatrix Lestrange Dead!

doing very little to make me feel any better.

"I don't know how any one person can get into so much trouble on their own, Éléonore," she said, moving from her chair to the edge of my bed

"What can I say?" I, using my arms and not my unforgiving stomach muscles, ask, "It's a talent, at least," as I try to sit up. I manage, with some difficultly, and look straight at her. "Did they tell you?"

She nodded embarrassedly. "March, huh?"

"I'll be a mum."

She turned a little pink at the thought, offering only a, "Weird," before looking away awkwardly.

I felt a blush tinge my cheeks too. "A little. Look, I-" I began, uncertain of what it was exactly I wanted – or needed – to say. I breathed as deeply as I cared with these blasted things on and tried again. "I-" Well, that was a bad start. It was best to be honest, I thought. Truth counts, Truth does count, Forrester had said in A Room with a View – the one Forrester book I'd actually liked, or finished. So I told her the truth, as much as I knew it. That I'd fallen in love with our snarky Potions Master during the Triwizard Tournament and kissed him at its end. That he'd fought me off until he no longer could, and how, McGonagall had know but hadn't said we couldn't, and how I found out I was pregnant and told in the same breath he proposed to me. I shared all of it, how I was afraid that, if we told, we'd be stopped or, worse, the papers would do what they did and Voldemort's wrath would have fallen before or during and that, maybe, it would be me or my little baby, who I didn't know was a boy or a girl or if I even wanted to know, lying blank-faced, dead on the ground outside the inn and not Bellatrix. "…and I've been so scared and wanted to tell you so much and just talk but there's not been time, what with Fleur monopolizing every free second until now trying to get everything ready that I really didn't even think had to be done for weddings and the rest of the time trying to fend of Sirius, who I've tried to explain everything to but just doesn't understand even though I can see why he wouldn't, or Ari, who I know I hired to be my lawyer but, God, I think she missed her calling as a manager or a PA, and who wants to put 'spin control' on everything and had paid Colin to follow me around all day Saturday, or, I dunno, everyone. And I know I'm sounding crazy and maybe I am, 'cause this whole ribs-that-can't-be-healed-the-normal,-fun-Skle-Grow-way thing hurts, and I just want to get out of my bed and back to my normal life and, I've really, really missed you hanging around and, Merlin, what time is it?"

"Almost time for first period," she said rather more solemnly then I might have wished. This, naturally, lead me to panic. Usually after my outbursts, people shouted. That was the reaction I was kind of looking for here. Or at least a mild scolding, and then a, "Oh,-Éléonore,-I-forgive-you," moment, followed by a, "I-forgive-you-too,-Hermione;-will-you-be-my-baby's-godmother?" I was getting tired of serious talks. My head hurt, and it seems that the wine from dinner (I think I had wine at dinner) plus the being knocked about by Trixie (God, was that only last night?) and the potions they'd surly given me to aide in the de-knocking-about.

"Who died?" Hermione wriggled uncomfortably, which worried me deeply, as it was not something Hermione usually did, as I asked this with all seriousness I could given my current distaste for anything lacking in miff-muffered moof. "I mean it, really, what's wrong?"

She shifted uncomfortably. "Well," she tried, "it's just… aren't things moving too fast?"

Blankly, "So no one's dead?" I was very curious as to why she was like this if no one was dead. I mean, death, injury, etc… those are bad things. Very few other things, baring apocalypse or Voldemort's latest plan to kill (which I think falls under death) or capture (which probably falls under injury) me.

"It's just…" my favourite bookworm continued as if I'd not said anything, "Aren't things going a little… fast? I mean, you're only sixteen, Éléonore. I mean, one moment Dumbledore disappears and suddenly the DA becomes your own personal fighting squad and-" I tried to interrupt, "No! I've been quiet long enough, Éléonore! I mean, really now, first you're living with a professor and sabotaging Umbridge's classes – well that wasn't too bad, but still – and then, suddenly, I find out from the papers that you're marrying the guy, and, whatever your reasons for not telling me," she was deeply frazzled now, wringing her hands like an old fishwife, "or anyone, it's still something I should have heard from you, not a paper notorious for printing lies and half-truths about your life, to a man who, to be perfectly honest, I'd sooner have cut out my own tongue then thought anyone would ever marry, let alone you. And now this. And now a baby? How are you going to take care of one? I mean, it's a baby, Éléonore," like I didn't know that. "Merlin, Éléonore, we're still in school? Are you just going to drop out? Or are you going to try to stay in school and take care of it? And, beyond that, you're only sixteen! People don't get married at sixteen, not without a reason. Not without some bloody big reason – but you said that Professor Snape asked you simultaneously, or before, or whatever, so that's not the reason – but the fact remains that you are married to him, and love may be one thing and it may be something that I can't see that made you fall in love with him – goodness knows I don't know why I like Ron, and I can get over the fact that you love Snape, I really can, if you give me time – and even the whole baby thing, that I can handle too, by March at least. But what I can't understand is, God, what's the rush. You don't marry for love at sixteen, and if it's not for that – that – thing inside you then what? Why?"

I blinked a few times at her, amazed at her outburst, and angered. Without thinking, I jumped to my feet, the sheets pulled around me as I searched for my clothes. My own things, not the robe and camisole from the night before, were there – a uniform that still fit, with a shirt that I could button on, not have to pull over my wounds. Severus. Where was he? As I pulled on my uniform, I tried not to yell at her for her stupidity – I tried to be reasonable. I'm not going to shout. I'm not going to shout. "Where's Severus?" I asked as politely as I could.

"Didn't you just hear what I said?" her voice was the same shrill mine got when I was angry.

I'm not going to shout, I mantra-ed in my head, I'm not going to shout, I tried again. "Yes, I did," my voice was tight. Bad sign. And the shoe's he'd brought – not school shoes. I swear, shoes tell more about a situation then anything else. Wrong shoes. Wrong foot. Wrong, I dunno, time of day in the wrong time of week in a wrong kind of place for this wrong kind of conversation. I probably had radical ideas on the meaning of footwear, but it remained true, "and I'm doing my utmost best to ignore it so that I don't break anything else and have to wear these bloody plasters for a moment longer than necessary. I'm going to go, from where the light's coming in, that it's morning. Or early afternoon. Is he teaching?" I search for my watch and, in searching, remember I don't have one. I need a watch. And some saltines. Or maybe pudding – anything but that tapioca – or possibly some raspberries with cream.

"You can't just will this away, Harry!"

I spun on her, "The name is Éléonore. Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Black Potter Snape." I hated the name sometimes, but it was my name, and I spat it at her like, not like it was poison, but like it was something you spat. So much for not yelling. "And I will will it the bloody hell away from me if I want to! It's my bloody life and my bloody choice if I want to rush through it or not!"

Hermione, now standing and looking more worried then angry, which really bothered me to tell you the truth and I was about willing to forgo the nice Armani three-piece suits. "Something is just plain wrong here, Harry, Éléonore, whatever-"

I pointed my wand at her, and felt my insides tremble with anger. "The only thing wrong here is you're supposed to be my friend – all of you, you're supposed to be my friends, and happy because I'm happy. But, no, you just say that and then, suddenly, we're worse off then we started with this. You don't have to forgive me for not telling you but, Herne and Hecate, it was my decision. Mine. To keep my baby safe. 'Cause that's all that bloody matters right now. Not you, not me, not even sodding Voldemort. I am going to give this kid the life I was denied, and that is damn-well going to include a happy family. So get your head out of your bloody arse and start coming around, because you are my oldest friend and my kid is going to need a Godmother." I turned on my good leg – the one that wasn't fighting to introduce me to its friend, the decidedly boring tile floor of the hospital wing – and spelled the door to open for me.

I spelled it closed a second later, after a mob of owls deluged through the door, dropping fan mail, curse envelopes, and every newspaper in the English language and about half of those printed in French and Sino-Japanese. I picked up one, tossed it aside because I couldn't understand a word on it, then found one proclaiming both my wedding to Severus and murder of Trixie. A quick glance of the pile showed some that stressed one or the other to some degree, and the packages, one of which I opened, contained things like solid silver tea sets and crystal vases. Creepy, random people sending me glassware. "I so need a PA," I moaned, shrinking the mess and stuffing it in my pocket. The owls hooted, though a handful of Knuts calmed them, and I let myself sink where I was standing, collapsing on the floor as my leg gave way. "No. I just need all these… people to leave me alone. You too," I said as Hermione approached, her angry-concern turning swiftly into concerned-concern. It annoyed me. "Why can't you leave me alone?" She came closer, and something snapped in me. My wand was lost somewhere, in my pockets or by my hand or wherever, but it didn't matter. I just lifted my hands and turned, tears streaming down my face from who knows where, feeling empty and angry and just wanting to be left alone. A wave of bale blue energy shot from my hands and pushed her – and the owls and the letters that flapped on their own and a cat hiding under one of the beds that I called Boots because I wasn't sure what its name was or who it belonged to – out the door. A twist of the wrist locked it and snapped the shutters. And I lay there, tears falling without sobs, Paracelsus singing some really bloody annoying pop song that had Acel trying to hum the harmonica parts, lying prone and motionless on the floor, a pale and shimmering blue light limning the room.

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I was alone. I had always been utterly and completely alone. I was a fool to think I could be happy.

The only one who loved me, the only one who understood, he'd be on his way soon. The rest of them, they didn't understand. If they loved me, they would want me to be happy. If they loved me, they would see how bloody happy I was with Severus – well, not at the moment. Now I was pretty rightly retched, but that was only minimally his fault – and wouldn't be so bloody angry about me loving him and marrying him and all that. But everyone who loved me had died for me.

That was it, I saw with sudden clarity. Love was Death. Whether it was dying or killing or dying when they died on you, loving someone was dying and anyone that truly loved someone else would inevitably die for or because of them. My parents had died for their love of me. Susan Bone's aunt and uncle and cousins all those years ago and her aunt over the summer and probably her parents last night if the Order hadn't gotten to them in time had died, if not for love of me, than for love of freedom from Voldemort which was my destiny. I could go on, but it depressed me.

How was I supposed to defeat Voldemort if he'd killed so many and defeated even Dumbledore? Sure, the Headmaster had this probably pointless idea that learning about Tommy-boy's childhood would show me a way to destroy the bastard, but, really, knowledge only got you so far. You still needed wits to make something of it, or power to use it, or strength to survive it. And, sure, I was smart enough to create or summon or whatever Niynhi, the black jaguar tattooed on my thigh; sure I was strong enough to get out of a tough scrape or powerful enough to blast myself out of it, but I didn't have any uncommon skills or powers to kill a wizard like Voldemort.

I remembered what Dumbledore had said, during the wedding:

"…If there is anything in this world that cannot be understood by those who have never experienced, it is love. If anything in this world exists that is stronger and less breakable then magic, it is love. And, if any one thing in this world can keep what is Dark and cruel and breakable at bay, it is love. It is a power understood by so few…"

Love was my uncommon power, or so Dumbledore claimed. Because love got other people to die for you until you were strong enough to kill or die for them…

I would not let Severus die. Or Hermione or Sirius or Remus or Ron or Ginny. Or little unborn Claudia-Éléonore Séléné or, I dunno, Alexander-Sévères something-or-other.

I stood and went to see Dumbledore.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

"You think he succeeded then, sir?" I asked, trembling in my seat. I felt cold as he explained it to me – as he showed me Slughorn's falsified memory. "You think that's what he did, why he didn't die when he attacked me? You think he had a Horcrux hidden somewhere? A bit of his soul safe somewhere." Bastard, I thought, rubbing my hands on my arms. I could tell from the look in his eyes I was still shimmering with a faint, electric-blue light. I couldn't get it to stop, no more than I could stop from feeling cold and scared and trembling. I didn't like feeling so weak. But I'd always been as weak as I was now. The showing of it was new. I didn't like it. Not at all.

"A bit… or more. I can't know the details – Horace, I think, is ashamed of what he remembers and tampered with his memory, tried to rework it to show himself in a better light, obliterating those parts which he does not wish me to see. It is, as you will have noticed, very crudely done, and that is all to the good, for it shows that the true memory is still there beneath the alterations – but Riddle always was too smart to show his hand if it wasn't necessary. For Tom to know that such a thing as Horcruces existed most likely entails that he already knew how to create one, or the basics thereof. But for him to risk asking someone who he could never be certain where his loyalties lay, or anyone at all… that is the rub, isn't it, Mrs. Snape?"

I held myself tighter. I still wasn't used to the idea of being Mrs. Snape, even after all this time. Mrs. Snape. How odd. How unbelievably odd. "So he'd only ask if it was something he couldn't find in books or papers," I thought out loud; the blue blanket of light tightened until it was like plastic cellophane around me. It warmed like a Zephyr Charm and tingled like a faint electrical shock. I thought it hummed. "Something new. Something different. Something that no one's ever tried before. Or something so old it predated the word." I was clutching my knees now and shaking. Or maybe I'd been this whole time. I stopped and turned towards him, lowering my feet from the chair to the floor. "You said – you said Riddle's diary was your proof, that Voldemort had split his soul. But he was still incorporeal then. He didn't come back until two years after the Chamber." My eyes found his twinkling ones. "The diary, it was… remarkably blasé of him. I mean, it held a piece of his soul. A half of it, if it was the first he made. He should have hidden it away. If he wanted to be immortal – if any one wanted to be immortal – they would hide the bit of their soul away where no one could find it, where no one would look for it. Don't the legends have it that Méléagre put a bit of his soul into a log and gave it to his mother Althaea to hide with her spinning things? And what about Rasputin? His was in a crucifix in the Peter and Paul Cathedral until Prince Felix destroyed it '36. But, rather than hide it away where it couldn't be found, or put it where it wouldn't be destroyed, Voldemort put it in the position where someone might destroy it, like me, without ever knowing what it was." I lowered my arms now, as words came back to me from that awful night, "I, who have gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality." "And he wasn't destroyed. Meaning…" further than anybody, "he has to have more then one, doesn't he? You think he has more than one Horcrux."

"Without Slughorn's un-tampered memory, my dear Harry, and much else besides, I cannot be certain, but, yes. Most likely. At least two, possibly a great many more, some inconspicuous – though I doubt that-"

The blue light faded into my skin now, though I felt I still glowed at the fingertips and about the eyelashes, and looked towards the table where the Gaunt ring lay. Voldemort had already been wearing it in Slughorn's altered memory. He was already a patricide – a murderer, like me. "He takes prizes. The rest, however many there are, are bound to be valuable. In plain sight, like Rasputin's, or places no one would think to look, like Méléagre's."

"Yes," Dumbledore said solemnly. "Most likely, yes."

I was biting my lip by this point. "But… how do you destroy them? It took Basilisk venom to break the spell on the diary. Even I know how rare and dangerous a thing that is. It would take something stronger than even an artafyrus… Fiendfyre, maybe… phoenix fire, even, if Fawkes would consent… I could get Sus to give me some of his venom, but…" I swallowed, "You said the power, the one I'm supposed to destroy Voldemort with, is love. None of those things are love; they're just some thinking and research. And it still doesn't solve the problem of Tommy himself. Even without his Horcruces, he's a powerful wizard. And I'm only… I'm just Éléonore."

He made it a point for his baby blues to meet my eyes. "Harry- Éléonore," he corrected, "I said it yesterday, and it's just as true now as it was then: love is a power no one, not even the most sagely, ever fully understands. Especially not Voldemort. Just take a look at your life, Éléonore. Parents murdered before you at such a young age, facing trial after trial here at Hogwarts – despite, I must add, much effort to keep you safe on my part – and the renewal of the war: it is amazing that you can love at all. Yet, here you are, with a school full of classmates who love you, not out of fear or a desire for power, but out of admiration; with true friends, who have stuck by you through much that would stretch any friendship; and, dare I say it, with Severus, who has been made as if reborn from your union – the antithesis of everything Voldemort believes. In spite of all the temptation you have endured, all the suffering, you remain purse of heart, just as pure as you were at the age of eleven, when you stared into a mirror that reflected your heart's desire, and it showed you only the way to thwart Lord Voldemort, and not immortality or riches. Éléonore, have you any idea how few wizards could have seen what you saw in that mirror? Voldemort should have known then what he was dealing with, but he did not!"

I struggled to get to my feet, and failed. Collapsing back, I shouted words that came out only as whispers and pained gasps.

"There it is again! What. Not who – but what. Like I'm only a weapon."

"Éléonore-"

"No. No. No. No. No! No matter which way you spin it you're still saying that my purpose – my only reason in life – is to destroy Voldemort! That's always what it's been. I've never been a person as far as you or anyone else has ever been concerned. You say my secret power, the one Voldemort doesn't understand, is love – but the only people who ever truly loved me are all in the ground! All of them, except for Severus!"

"Éléonore-"

"No! I won't stop it! I've a right to be angry, to be upset. You've seen them, hell, you saw them yesterday. The way they talk to me. The way they look at me," I made it to my feet and turned towards the table with the Gaunt ring. I picked it up and held it in my shaking hands, with the Peverell coat of arms split down the middle. It had held, what, a fourth of Tom Riddle's soul? If he made the diary first, and split his soul in half, that left him with half, and if the ring was second and he put half of what he had then into it then he'd a fourth left, then an eighth… and though they were lesser bits, they grew stronger as he grew stronger. It looked like something from a Beedle the Bard, but what did I know of Wizarding history? I closed the ring in my fist. "I'm only my parents' daughter to them, the bloody Girl-Who-Lived. I'm not a really bloody person, and the only one who has ever seen me as human the rest hate me for. Sure, I may love them, but they bloody well don't love me, sir. How's that for a secret weapon. I'll just walk up to Voldemort and tell him how much I love him, and won't he please just be my grandfather for ever and ever and give me dollies and puppies and bleeding picture books?" I threw the ring to the ground in cold fury. The stone popped out of the setting, showing that stone was still whole, only cracked halfway through. I didn't like it. It felt wrong. Anything that had a fourth of Voldemort's soul in it for long had to feel foul. This calmed me, somehow. I could handle evil. Love I couldn't understand. "This was a Horcrux." Was, as in no longer. I could sense it. In the way that any one could sense the presence – or the absence – of ultimate evil. "You destroyed the bit of soul in it without love, or a Basilisk fang. How?"

"Éléonore-"

"Oh, just forget it already," I picked up the stone and the gold band and placed it back on the table, and sat back down, clutching my sides and my back. "I'm over it. Me, weapon with a destiny. Just teach me how to destroy it…" I sunk as best as my ribs would let me. Ow. The uncomfortable bloating feeling of being three months going on four and slumped in a chair. Ow. And people said that the second trimester was the easiest of pregnancy. Or so I'd read. I'd not really discussed it with anyone, nor was Severus exactly knowing of these particular details of life, the universe, and everything.

I hated his twinkle. He was like a grandfather to me, he really was, and I looked up to him in all the ways a person could look up to another. I loved him, but, Merlin, he bugged me sometimes. He stood and walked around his desk – but didn't, as I thought he might, go to the table with the broken Gaunt ring, but to one of the many bookshelves in the office and removed a small blue book from it. "Have you ever read Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra?" Handing me the book, he returned to his desk. "A Muggle playwright, one of my favourites his play trilogy Mourning Becomes Electra is a retelling of Aeschylus's The Oresteia. The final play in the series, The Haunted, Lavinia Mannon is trying to break the curse on the Mannon family – the House of Atreus – and cries to her fiancé, 'Nothing matters but love, does it? That must come first! No price is too great, is it?'" Sighing, "You embody that idea, Éléonore. You may hate your family and friends at the same time you can still love them with all of your heart. No holds barred. In all my hundred and fifteen years, I've seen people who love and seen people who hate, I've seen one turned to the other and I've seen both fizzle into indifference, but I have rarely, if ever truly, seen one person do both so completely – without going mad."

I snorted at him, placing the book back down, "You forgot the rest of what Lavinia says, sir. 'Or for peace! One must have peace – one is too weak to forget – no one has the right to keep anyone from peace!' Is that what you want from me? For me to give my life to defeat this most recent of evils? Or, if I don't die, to live long enough to tell the next 'only hope' that they must be prepared to give his life in his battle against his evil? I tell you what, sir, I've read O'Neill. I've read Beckett. I've read The Brothers Karamazov. I don't care much for the big fight, I just want to live."

His eyes twinkled less then; his smile was grim and determined. "That is my wish for you too, Mrs. Snape… And so, for the first time, I am giving you homework – though I do think we can spare the few days it will take for your ribs to heal completely before you undertake it," his smiled grew warmer then, "and remind me, later, to congratulate Severus quite publicly. You must persuade Professor Slughorn to divulge the real memory, which will undoubtedly show us if our reckonings are true, and Riddle made not one, but at least two Horcruces before leaving this school, and that he may have desired to make still more from trophies dear to him until he succeeded in making himself something barely recognizable as human. Horace would not give it to me."

But he would to me. I was a favourite of his. Like Riddle…

I left the room in silence, not questioning this last logic, but, as I was heading down the stair, I heard Phineas Nigellus ask the Headmaster, "I don't know how you expect the girl to do any better than you, despite the heavy aura she was showing. She's only a child."

"I don't believe it was an aura, Phineas, but a new magic – or, rather, a very old one, if I'm not mistaken. There is more to Mrs. Snape then you would understand."

Yet, I still had Potions to go to after that wonderful talk and hardly any of my questions answered, including the most important one. But cutting classes after storming out of the hospital wing would earn me no friends and, besides, I was sure more people wanted to question my sanity over my marriage/murder/pregnancy. Couldn't disappoint them, now could I?


	24. In Which I Develop a Very Acute Case of Run Away Train Syndrome

Though it was nearly Valentine's Day – which, as before, went unmentioned and uncelebrated in the Snape household, Severus because he was, nominally, not a sentimental fool willing to waste his time on a holiday designed by Muggle companies to make money after the Christmas rush and before its too early (even for them) to start readying the world for Easter et cetera et cetera et cetera, and I because I, this year at least, was boycotting any holiday which evolved from hitting pregnant women with strips of rawhide taken from recently slaughtered goats – before I was able to get the memory out of Slughorn, I'd filled mental volumes with thoughts, running one after another until I was at a place I'm not even sure existed before or after.

The diary was his first Horcrux, holding one half of his soul, at a time when he was not un-powerful but still far from his future strength. It was the weakest, though it held the most of him. But it was also the most sentimental. It was him, or him as he was as a sixteen-year-old boy. Not un-handsome, I must grudgingly admit, or un-dangerous but still Tom Riddle.

The ring was his second, with a fourth of his slightly-more-powerful soul inside. It was sentimental too – not because it was created with the death of his father, Riddle Sr., but because it was a Gaunt family heirloom, and the Gaunt's were his mother's people, and they could trace their linage back to Salazar Slytherin and, since the stone on the ring had the Peverell coat-of-arms, probably the Peverells too. It was his heritage, which was important because he had only ever loved people who were dead – his dead mother (once he realized she was the witch), his dead ancestors – if that could be called love at all what he felt for bodies cold in the ground, rotting away as time moved on.

From what Dumbledore had said, it was probably the cup that was next, the one stolen from Hepzibah Smith, as Voldemort probably wanted to vet the locket before putting an eighth of his yet-more-powerful soul in it. A sixteenth would go into the locket as he learned its true history and grew more powerful still. And this is the most telling, because these two items showed his sentimentality in a way he would not wish had he known because, not only were they priceless, museum-quality pieces that would never, ever be destroyed – like Rasputin's – even if they were ever found – probably here like Méléagre, – they were both objects of the founders. Hufflepuff's cup. Slytherin's locket. And both were important to him, as well as trophies of the kill.

Voldemort was a megalomaniac. That we already knew. But the extent of his megalomania was this: he thought he was on the same level as the founders. To put bits of his soul into Hufflepuff's cup and Slytherin's locket as well as the diary of his Sixth Year self? Why, it seemed to me that it said more about him then anything else could. He thought he was on that level. And only that level would be good enough for his soul, as broken as it was by this point, and scattered across the isle.

And that was another thing. One would think, if one was making seven, as we eventually assumed from Slughorn's memory, that one would scatter them across the world in various deep and hidden places. If it was me, I'd put one, say, in a cave in the Himalayas, another in a pyramid in Egypt, the third somewhere in the Yukon, maybe the fourth in the Yucatán or the Moskva Museum of Wizarding History – you get the idea. Spaces far apart, hard to get to, and you'd actually have to know what you were looking for – id est, not the gilded cup in the locked chest the dragon's clutching, but maybe an iron link in the dragon's collar. Riddle could have done that but, to the best of our knowledge, he didn't. The ring was in a spectacularly gold box under a floorboard in his mother's childhood home. The diary was in Malfoy Sr.'s possession (a moment of queasiness thinking of the man I'd slaughtered) and, like most British Wizards, the Malfoys rarely left the nation of their birth. The Potters had considered themselves Brit, even if their homestead was on the continent and they'd a French holding, for centuries after the Muggle world had resigned Calais to the Bourbons. No, Lucius had hid his share of his master's soul domestically. The rest were probably in the country too, because Britain meant something to Riddle, if not to the same degree Hogwarts.

Which, when you boiled it all down, probably meant that his other Horcruces were things of the Founders and hid somewhere between Thruso and Falmouth which, considerably, narrowed down what we were looking for.

The why of it all was a little fuzzy, what with the prophesy and the free-will question and all of that, but the fact remained that Voldemort had tried to kill me, had killed my parents, and had done a lot of not-so-nice things, so I generally kept that out of my mind and just did the research. I'd real notebooks full of what I could gain from books about Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, in particular, what else I could find about the other two, which was substantially less useful as he already had one each of their belongings and wasn't likely, in my opinion, to go back for seconds. Dumbledore had, likely, covered all of this, but a fresh look at things probably wouldn't do any harm and, besides, he was rarely around after the wedding. The world was, after all, falling apart, and people looked to him to help put it back together, mostly because he'd done it before. And I thought he was trying to rustle up some more stuff on Voldemort's life, particularly his time after graduation to when he emerged as the most recent incarnation of the Dark Lord.

I only told Severus about the Horcruces, and he got real white when I did. His eyes widened then, so you could almost here him say in a tone that succeeded very well in pretending he wasn't surprised, "Well, that explains quite a lot," and he sat staring at the fire most the rest of the evening, holding me tightly.

The others, if they wondered what was going on when I spent the copious amount of time I had between classes in the library, searching the Restricted Section on tangents that I hoped would lead me to something I could use, or else started getting scores similar to Hermione's own, not just in Potions or Charms, the latter of which I'd always been good at and former which I'd the benefit of cribbing from Severus, but in the rest of my classes, I didn't know. Things went on much as usual. I mean, yes, I couldn't fly now, but I still hosted Quidditch practice and spent hours talking strategy with Alycone, who replaced me on the team as Seeker for the Lions/'Puffs match and nearly drove her brother, the 'Puff's Seeker, into the ground with a feint. I still did my homework with Hermione and Ron, though Neville (and, thusly, Hannah Abbott, whenever she wasn't studying with Susan Bones, who, quite naturally, had hard feelings towards me as her parents had been tortured to death because of my wedding and was now living with the Abbotts until her older brother, who'd also been there and had some quite serious spell damage, was well enough to take care of her, which, as it was March already, might be quite some time), Ginny (and whatever boy she was dating this month), Oliver, and, occasionally, Alycone had joined us. And the DA had restarted, this time as a school-sanctioned club open to third-years and above, though Alycone came anyway, under the good auspices of Severus so long as I didn't teach them anything that could be used to maim or cheat.

I don't know if they felt it, the surreality of our situation. I mean, on one hand everything was going on between us as it always had, and we were friends as always, even during that uncomfortable first week of November where Hermione thought I had gone quite mad, and things were quite good. We talked. We laughed. Fleur came up one weekend with Tonks in early December and dragged me to London to get maternity clothes and new uniforms, and with Ginny's help we brought Hermione along and made a girl's day of it. Until it got too cold, we studied out on the front lawn after classes, and when it snowed we played out in it like we normally would have.

Yet, there was the other, and it was so heavy that I was surprised we could function around it all because, truth was, there was a week in which Hermione had thought I was insane for marrying Severus and another separate few hours when Ron went into near catatonia upon told about the baby, which I still refused to have sexed, even though I was deep into March now and the baby's room – a cleared out storage room off of the Severus's laboratory, painted a cheerful sky blue by an over helpful Dobby and with all sorts of charmed clouds and stars on the ceiling that, while they didn't reflect the sky overhead like with the great hall, did a nice back and forth between a sunny day and a moonless night with the tap of the wand, for ease of naptime. I'd even moved a nice, old Carlton House desk into the room, and it was there that I'd a disturbing combination of books on Dark Arts, child rearing, and the four founders, as well as all my notebooks – was readied. I mean, with the sole exception of Ginny, my friends grudgingly accepted that there was nothing they could do about it, but were far from happy about it, though they really did try.

Things were better by March. Merlin, even Christmas was better than it was the first week or so, in which all the news was breaking and I was being constantly assaulted by owls and had sent Draco to the infirmary with a face full of boils (and was sent by him with a nasty accipicrines – Hair-Loss Hex – that, though Madam Pomprey grew my hair back just fine, caused my eyebrows to randomly fall out several times over that week). And Christmas was something.

So now I sat with a fresh notebook (three others in my bag, and a book I wouldn't dare let any of my friends knew I had) and doodled a giant, curly, "R," in the centre of the page. There was very little about her in this existence, but it was better then nothing. She was smart. But smart women did things that did were not so smart sometimes.

Take her daughter. The history was pretty clear that Rowena Ravenclaw was the daughter of Vortigern Ravenclaw, King of Briton, and his queen Ionwena. And that, sometime in her youth she was cast out of her home by her father, who did not believe in witchery, and from then on out she disguised herself as a boy, working her way across the country. Eventually, in her late twenties or early thirties, she met a teenage Helga travelling with her brother Hengest to be married to the local lordling. Rowena was going, I'd discovered in some very old books with the help of some translation charms and some major guesswork, by the name Faolán then and had self-taught herself most the magic one could at the time, and she was engaged to be young Helga's teacher by the Lord Hufflepuff. Some time passed, and the Lord Hufflepuff died, leaving Helga widowed after fifteen, maybe as many as twenty, years and quite surprised to find the man who had taught her and, later, her children, with child. No one knows who the father of Rowena's child was, only that she bore a daughter and that, before her daughter was ten, she and Helga had joined with Slytherin and Gryffindor and, sometime later, Hogwarts was founded. She died very young for a witch, and quite possibly of a broken heart.

So you have an intelligent witch who was cast out of the lap of luxury (for those times, at least) and able to survive despite it, spending nearly half of her life disguised as a man in result. What object would a woman like her value that a) might have survived and b) be singularly enough Rowena Ravenclaw – as the cup was for Helga Hufflepuff and the locket for Slytherin – to warrant being made by Voldemort into a Horcrux?

I doodled a girl wearing a wide skirt and one of those over-large, cone-shaped hats with an ineffectual veil that all storybook princesses wore in one corner and charmed it to walk about the page. Hermione was switching back and forth between her Arithmancy homework and helping Ron with his Potions essay across from me, and Alycone had a new shipment of Sino-Japanese comics from her supplier and was now deeply immersed in something called PuchiComi or something, so she wasn't paying any attention to me either. I'd finished my homework ages ago, which, I must add, is one of the fun side effects of all the studying I've been doing – homework is easier, probably out of practice or something like that. Oh well. I grimaced a little, and shifted in my chair as my very large stomach protested the position it was in, picking my quill up and deciding I might as well try again.

If I were Rowena Ravenclaw, what would I value? What would be so important to me, others would, centuries later, associate it with me and vice versa?

Books, but no one book had all the answers and, if she made one herself, it was not extant. Besides, Riddle already had the diary by this point, and he was not the type to repeat himself, just as he wasn't the type to make another Horcrux out of something of Hufflepuff's or Slytherin's after he had the cup and the locket. And not something necessarily to do with her intelligence. Possibly especially not to do with her intelligence. Riddle thought he was the smartest, the strongest; the best thing since Merlin, if not better. His diary, not anyone else's, even one might have existed. The cup, that made Helga seem like a drinker, or at least someone more interested in food than magic strong and lost. The locket was… sentimental, something Salazar Slytherin gave to his daughter, Madalen, whom he doted upon. Sentimentality was not something one generally expected or found in sly, pureblood-loving, Muggle-hating men generally remembered best this generation for leaving a Basilisk under the school. Riddle loved – well, loved, I suppose, is the closest thing to it – Hogwarts. He loved its history. It loved the strength and solidarity of the magic, and all it stood for.

He thought himself stronger than the founders. So, if given the choice, he'd choose something that'd make them look weaker still.

So, something important to Ravenclaw that mightn't be the first thing you'd associate with her – not like Gryffindor's sword. Swords were strong, no matter which way you swung them. Not a weapon. Not a book. But something.

I shifted position again, but it didn't really seem to help.

Rowena Ravenclaw was a princess. Did she keep any of the jewels or whatnot she might have had in her childhood, or did she leave those behind when she was kicked out? Probably not another ring, but a necklace (unless that was too like the locket?) or a bracelet or a pocket watch (did they have watches, pocket or no, back then?) or, Merlin, even one of those silly, conical princess hats?

This was getting me no where, and my back was really starting to hurt from all this sitting. I was three days past due now, and it as getting more and more worrisome each time I thought about it that I hadn't given birth yet. I mean, why hadn't I? Was I just going to get bigger and bigger like this until I burst, or had Madam Pomprey (I didn't know if I could ever call her Poppy, though she'd told me that, as a staff wife and her best patient, I might as well. The Slughorn made such a fuss every time I called him "Professor" or "sir," I ended up calling him Horace, even in class, just because it annoyed me so to listen to him tell me to) just guessed wrong and I was due later than she thought? I mean, besides a girl's name, I'd – finally – decided on a boy's name I liked that was by far better than Tonks's suggestion of Nigel, – Julien-Sévères –and just sort of wanted to get the whole thing over with. Because every time I thought about the actual labour part of childbirth, my stomach clenched in a painful promise of the future pain.

Severus said I was being silly, and maybe I was, and that the baby would come when the baby would come. So, at his urging, I'd gone on with my usual schedule and gone to meet Ron, Hermione, and Neville to study for our Potions test tomorrow, never mind the fact that I was married to a Potions Master who could have been oh-so-very-helpful if he didn't have DADA work to grade. As much as he enjoyed DADA, I think he was discovering that it wasn't as fun teaching – meaning that he couldn't just put the instructions on the board and correct as needed. A laconic man like him, he should have known he'd dislike any class where lectures were more or less frequent. Though he'd told no one but me, he was thinking of going back to Potions next year, if Horace left. I wondered who they would get next year for DADA. It was so… well, almost cool, that the position was cursed, excepting the part where two professors in recent memory were dead, two more in the secure ward of St. Mungo's (where idiots like Umbridge belonged), and Remus quite lucky not to be either one. Maybe they'd get someone decent, an Auror like Tonks or Shacklebolt, to teach after him. I'd almost take the class – almost – if Tonks was teaching it, even if I'm all set to take the NEWT this year. One of the advantages of having people try to kill you and two years of self-study, early NEWTing.

And this was getting stupid. I'd no idea if I was even on the right track, or if anything of Ravenclaw's had survived and, if it had, why I'd be the one to find it after, oh, a thousand or so years. What I was going to have to do is, if Voldemort loved Hogwarts so much, just make some sort of Dark Detector divining rod and go through every inch of the school, piece by piece, until I was sure it was nothing here (the most likely pace for the founder's artefacts to be; who knew, there might be places like the Chamber of Secrets hidden in the school by the other founders had placed for their descents to find. If there were places like that, Ravenclaw's had never been opened, unless Rowena had showed it to her daughter, Helena, who'd died when she was only my age, oh, fourteen hundred years ago… Which meant that anything Rowena valued enough to hide would have been safe in said chamber or room or whatever for the same fourteen hundred years, unless Helena had taken something out without her mother knowing, or Voldemort had found a way to trick the room into letting him in…

My head was hurting now, like my back, and trying to figure how to make something akin to a metal detector into something that discovered dark and/or hidden things was not something I was feeling up to. We had a deal, Dumbledore and I, that he would continue to search for the two we knew about – the cup and the locket – and I would look for those we did not know – something of Ravenclaw's and something of Gryffindor's; the things with a thirty-second and a sixty-fourth of Riddle's soul. If things worked that way, and the soul didn't regrow after splitting like cells meaning each Horcrux had a half of his soul within it… which meant like seven halves of it were out there, which made no sense at all.

Is it sad that I traded the notebook, now covered with nonsensical drawings and the phrase "here be dragons," for a text on inheritance law? I think it might have been. But the law was simple. The law made sense. It was very easy to see why Ari had found refuge in it. I wished, some of the time, that Ari would leave the offices of Dunn, Hastings, and McGully a little more often and, I dunno, take up a sordid affair with Sirius. Sirius certainly needing the mellowing, or, at least, the distraction a "girlfriend" would offer, and it wasn't like the Caudwell's didn't already live at HQ. I'd have to suggest the idea to Fleur, if she'd drop her own wedding plans for an instant (she's very angry that I've not given birth and therefore not yet slimmed back down to my original size, because she "needs" to get her bridesmaids fitted for their costumes, and if I'm to be the dame d'honneur come June, I better be "normal" sized soon and, so help-me-God, she was going to see that I was). Not to Tonks – now that she had gotten Remus to "understand" (ick!), the time she had formerly spent meddling in other peoples lives and turning random household appliances into small waterfowl in protest of the pictures of her on the wall was not mostly spent with Remus and turning random household appliances at The Sleeping Dragon into small waterfowl, having decided this was a better way of annoying her mother. Over the Easter hols, at least, I was going to have to elicit someone's help in finding Sirius a girlfriend, 'cause Merlin knew if he got some he might back off my case just a little.

Oh my God, I cannot believe I just thought that. I'm going to have to rinse my mind out with soap. The icky red kind that gave you soap poisoning.

That was it, I was too tired, even at eight o'clock at night, to do anything more. I'd exhausted myself cleaning all morning (Severus laughing at my "nesting," as he called it, in the nice way he was starting to do more and more often, and taking time out from his grading to give me a very nice snog that in no way lessened my "nesting" activities until I left to study for the blasted Potions test. Which I still hadn't properly done. Evil tests. Evil teachers. What was I supposed to say, I'm sorry, I didn't get around to studying last night because I was too busy trying to figure out what this season's Dark Lord might have hid his soul in so I can, if I ever figure out how, destroy it? Yes, that would go over real well. At least I had tomorrow morning to study…) and I didn't even want to think any more, except, if I stopped, I feared I might not start up again.

I closed the law book now and slid it into my pack, groaning loudly as it stood. I pain seemed sharper now, more focused. As Hermione turned towards me as if to ask if I was going to have a lie down, I picked up the arm Ron wasn't writing with and turned it to see his watch. It was 8:09.

Sitting back down, I ruminated on how badly I needed to get a watch. My birthday wasn't that far off – three months, tomorrow. Seventeen is a pocket watch sort of birthday, I think, what with the coming of age and all. Not that, technically, I'd be coming of anything, as I've been legally an adult since the moment I signed the marriage licence, and could do handy things like cleaning spells and killing curses outside of Hogwarts without a fuss. Merlin knew it had come in handy over the Christmas hols, making wrapping paper (and the decorations Andi once again insisted we put up) so much easier to clean up and little things like killing Andi's sister not quite as big a deal as it should have been. The party for that was quite awful for me to attend, the first Saturday after my ribs were healed, but somebody had to see Sirius didn't get the keys to the kitchen cabinets from Remus again and poison half the order, and everybody else seemed to enjoy themselves. Andi had been there, in yellow, very death-of-Catherine-of-Aragon-y but still very sombre, because Trixie had been her older sister and been presumably decent enough once upon a time and her own cousin's adopted daughter had murdered the woman. HQ still needed cleaning, and there were whole bags of stuff removed from the shelves were just sitting in the attic waiting to be sorted through for Dark, Dark and Dangerous, or just plain old Dangerous, and Sirius sure as anything wasn't doing it. I should have spent this morning there, doing that, because, after all, there were only so many times you could clean the same set of apartments before it was too clean to see the point in doing it again.

Ah, there was the pain again, worse than any cramps. I picked up Ron's watch again; it read 8:17.

But yes, a watch would be real nice. I could just buy one myself, but what was the point in that. Subconsciously, I fingered the bracelet he'd given me last Christmas with the quote from Ovid's Amores engraved upon it. Like the locket I'd received for my birthday and my rings, they were special to me because they were from him. Somehow, I don't know why, it seemed wrong to even think about getting a watch for myself. But that could be the shadow of a girl who'd spent ten years in a cupboard talking. I still preferred to buy expensive things for my friends rather than myself. Merlin, I was even of half a mind to by something nice for the Dursleys and curse it so it caused them to, I dunno, loose their taste buds, but I tried to avoid vengeful thoughts. Just like I tried to avoid thinking about things like Bellatrix's death or Lucius's, yet here I was, having thought of both in the same night.

Malfoy really wasn't happy at me. I was surprised that nothing had happened since the week I'd the eyebrow trouble, but maybe he was just planning something big and terrible for when I was off my guard. That was a Slytherin type of thing. They generally preferred their revenge cold, and even Malfoy could learn subtly if it was necessary. Or maybe even he had morals about attacking a pregnant woman. Stranger things had happened.

8:25 now. Sixteen minutes after the first and eight minutes after the second. Either Braxton-Hicks were trying out patterns, or I was having contractions.

I stood up again and gathered my bag. "I'm heading up to the hospital wing," I told them. "One of you mind getting Severus and telling him I'm going into labour?"

Alycone, surprisingly, looked up from her magazine. All three Paracelsus's heads, which'd been looking at the pictures right along with her, rose too, looking like a weird crown on her head. "I'll go."

"Thanks," I smiled at her. If Ari and Sirius hit it off (and I was getting ahead of myself here), Alycone could be my adoptive stepsister. There were worse things. Someone was going to have to floo Sirius too… and Mrs. Weasley… and get Ginny from the common room and Oliver from his…

Ron and Hermione could handle that. I hoped.

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At 4:37 in the morning on 31 March, 1997, Claudia-Éléonore Séléné Snape was born. She was six pounds, three ounces, and perfect, with a tuft of black hair starting on her head and a nose that wasn't so much hawkish as slightly large for her face. Already her eyes were the most striking steel grey…

The moment I first saw her, I was helplessly wound around about her finger, and she could have started then and there hissing pop songs with Paracelsus (who'd fallen asleep sometime around midnight saying human egg-laying was stupid, which was all well and good because he had been singing "comforting" pop songs for me until then) and I wouldn't have blinked at it. I just held her, watching her feed and sleep and just be until I was too tired to keep my eyes open, falling asleep with her in my arms.

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I had the dreams again. I had gotten almost used to them – random flashes in dreams once or twice a month of Hogwarts, of Severus and that boy who might be our son but wasn't this child. Just flashes – a look here, a phrase there. Nothing as vivid as the first one, with the night on fire around them. I passed it off as dreams of fancy, caused by hormones and stress and maybe a little lingering magic from my tattoo of Niynhi. But this was different, no matter how much I wanted to pretend otherwise. It felt real, beyond myself, and very far from anything that I might imagine in my current exhaustion, marvelling at the workings of Claudia's tiny hands, so perfect and strong as they curled about my thumb as I'd fallen asleep.

The blackness dissolved into the shadowy, flickering light of torches in a drafty hall. The boy called Potter pressed his ear against a door and then, after a paused, pushed it open as quietly as he could. In my sleep, I gave a wry smile. Marauder, I thought.

What I saw next surprised me, for there, in what was very obviously Moaning Myrtle's bathroom (after so much time there, how could I not know it? And, besides, no other girl's bathroom in Hogwarts was ever that empty. Believe me; I had come to know them well over the last nine months. I wondered what this boy, whether he was mine or no, was doing in this bathroom. If it was anything like me, I could only suspect that something bad was going on, be this some strange dream or some glimpse of the future afforded me – I think, if I remember correctly, jaguars were considered psychic animals in most ancient mythologies. It was too much to think I was about to see a scene of my mum and dad's courtship, or that of a future son and a daughter-in-law? Or-?

But it was Draco Malfoy, head bowed and shoulders shaking, over one of the sinks, and the ghost comforting the boy. I don't know which was stranger. "Don't," she crooned. "Don't… tell me what's wrong… I can help you." If this boy was my son, or something like – which had to be, because it had to be someone related to me, because he looked so much like Dad, and it couldn't be the past because Severus was there, even if he looked the same age as he was now – what was Draco doing there? Unless it was Draco's son, which again brought up the question of why Severus looked thirty-seven and not in his fifties, as he would be when Claudia was my age, and what the likelihood of a child that looked like my father meeting up with a child that looked exactly like my present day school "nemesis." If that was the case, what were they doing here?

Draco spoke then, not with his normal arrogance but something small and frightened, almost child-like, "No one can help me. I can't do it… I can't… It won't work… and unless I do it soon… he says he'll kill me." Not a tryst then, I thought, oddly relieved. I mean, Draco had something of the Black praetorian look about him, but not enough to be considered handsome – I hoped any son of mine would have better standards, but weirder things had happened, I supposed. More importantly, who would kill him? – Draco, I mean, not my son, if that's who he was. Voldemort? Where was I then, and who was this kid? I ran through the list of he's – his father? But only if he was Draco's son, not Draco himself, because I'd killed Lucius last May. His uncle Rodolphus? But why? Rodolphus was back in Azkaban, and, despite an attempt in January to break the Death Eaters out again, he wasn't in a position for his death threats to have much practical meaning (though, according to the Azkaban guards, who'd passed the message along until it got to the auror members of the Order, Rodolphus was decidedly not happy I'd killed his wife). The male Carrow, whose name I could never remember which was which because both their names were so masculine? And what wasn't working? What couldn't he do?

With a shock that seemed pass from the Potter boy and into myself (who, I still had trouble remembering, was no longer a Potter but a Snape), I saw that Malfoy was crying. Actually, full-stream-of-tears, oh-my-God-this-can't-be-real crying. Even seeing him so angry at me over his father's, er, murder, and the more intended one of his aunt, I don't think I ever really had thought of Draco as… Draco. Not Malfoy, but the actual boy. If this was Draco.

Before I could think any further, Malfoy looked up and saw reflected there the unknown Potter, a heartbeat later sending an artafyrus his way. The boy who looked like my father stepped aside, but it didn't much matter because Malfoy's aim had been shoddy and it missed by inches, leaving little more than a wavy pit in a stone it hit. With a flick of the wand – yes, a silent cast at last – but Malfoy blocked it with a counter jinx and began another.

"No! No! Stop it! Stop! STOP!" Myrtle shouted, but neither paid the ghost any attention as her voice echoed and carried throughout the room and down the stone halls. The wall directly behind the boy exploded with a wonderful aboleo spell that brought the stones tumbling down upon my father's replicate. Not to be outdone, the replicate sent a Leg-Locker that missed, hitting a pipe that began to hiss water threateningly.

Menacingly as he pulled himself up from the puddle forming around him, "Cruc-" Draco began, not to finish, for the replicate shouted just a second quicker, "SECTUMSEMPRA," causing, much like my husband said it would, a deep slash mark from left shoulder to right pelvis. It was like a ribbon, the blood spurted and fell forward in an arc as Malfoy tumbled backwards into the sink and slipped onto the quickly flooding floor.

"No-!" the boy gaped and gasped, slipping as staggering across the floor to the quickly paling body, which looked so much like his father's in death, and put a hand to the blood-soaked uniform shirt. "No – I didn't –!" His face was wane. Didn't he know what the spell was – though how he'd learned this spell from Severus's Darker days was another question entirely – and, if not, why had he used it? Stupid; you never, ever use a spell you don't know the consequences of, never!

But Myrtle shouted, almost happy, "MURDER! MURDER IN THE BATHROOM! MURDER!" and I watched the body drained of life and the boy, so sad and desperate, trying to hold it in, as if a pair of hands and all the hope in the world could keep something so precious inside the body where it belonged. It stained his hands mercilessly and jutted forth into the puddling water, where it turned pale pinkish red and stained Malfoy's shirt back and the cuffs of the replicate's shirt. ("The Replicate" – how very azi did that sound? I must have read entirely too much science-fiction in the last few weeks for my thoughts to be working properly.) It made me proud for the boy and sadder for Draco, who didn't deserve to die, not when he'd not done any of the awful things I'd killed his (grand?)father and (great?)aunt for.

Then, quite suddenly, the bathroom door banged open and Severus – my Severus, as he was now, with the same, if you looked close enough, thread of silver starting to form near his face – entered in a storm, with his robes billowing in the way they did, like an extension of himself, and took control of the situation in the way I loved him for. Before a moment had even passed, he had pushed the boy aside and begun to mutter the song-like countercurse over and over again until it took. Pulling Malfoy to his feet as soon as it was safe, he spoke, not sympathetically, but concernedly. "You need the hospital wing. There may be a certain amount of scarring, but if you take dittany immediately we might avoid even that… Come…" Only now seeming to see the other boy, "And you, Potter… You wait here for me."

Luckily the boy did as asked – I was curious too, though I wished Myrtle would quiet her joyful moaning – and so was there when Severus returned. The boy tried to explain, but Severus didn't care – motives rarely concerned him, only actions. "Apparently I underestimated you, Potter. Who would have thought you knew such Dark Magic? Who taught you that spell?"

"I – read about it somewhere." The lie was evident on his face, if only because I'd seem my own features moulded into that self-same look of confusion, especially of late with the Horcruces.

"Where?"

"It was – a library book. I can't remember what it was call-"

"Liar. Bring me your schoolbag and all of your schoolbooks. All of them. Bring them to me here. Now!"

The boy didn't question. He ran full out through the halls to the tower, dripping water and pinkish, watery blood with every squelching step.

What he was looking for seemed to be in his room, and it had the familiar look of all boys' dorms. There was even a Weasley there, at the top of the stair, with the stark red hair and dusting of freckles. He looked almost unmistakably like Ron. What was the chance that a boy who looked like my father, another who looked like Draco, and a third who looked now like Ron, though he could, admittedly, have been Ron's own son, if he ever got his act together with Hermione? And with Severus looking the same age he did now?

"Where've you-? Why are you soaking-? Harry, is that blood?"

Harry. The Ron-replicate had called my father's replicate Harry. And I would never, ever name my child Harry. Or Harriett. Not when computers were stupid, name-bungling things.

"I need your book. Your Potions book. Quick…!"

"But what about the Half-Blood Pr-?"

"I'll explain later!"

But the boy, Harry, as smart as he was, whoever he was, didn't go straight back to Severus. He clearly didn't know that the "Half-Blood Prince" was Severus – though, another question, how could he have Severus's book without knowing it was Severus – and that the spell could only have come from that book. He thought he was being sneaky, or guarding himself and the book. Smart, almost, and the almost only because I knew it wouldn't work. A shame though.

Harry went to a place I knew well – the Room of Requirement – and, when he opened the door, it was as if he'd stumbled upon the world's largest storeroom.

Furniture of every style, paintings, portraits, statues, books – you name it, it was there. I didn't pay much attention to the junk, I just watched Harry as he moved. Who was this Harry? And why was he here? And why was it lifted and taken somewhere from the far end of town where the Grickle-grass grows? I'd watched him before, but now I watched him closer. The hair, wild and untameable, like my own until it let it grow, like what everyone said my father's was like and, maybe, what my little Claudia's would be like, unless it inherited the heaviness of Severus's. And the eyes – emerald. Not my father then – his eyes were hazel, an oddly specific detail I'd been told time and time again – but what of the rest of my family tree? I'd seen one, once, in a book of the old pureblood families. The Most Dignified and Decorous House of Potier had a chapter, as did the Most Exalted House of Prince and the Ancient and Noble House of Black. What about my grandfather, Henri-Gabriel Gérald Rémy Potter, 10th Baron de Calais? Or his father, the 9th Baron, Gabriel-Zacharie Daniel Gérald? Or his, with another of the long French names, Zacharie-Richard Héraclès Gérald? I knew their names from books, and those of their wives. I knew from that book both my grandparents were born before the turn of the last century, which said something as I was on the cusp of another now. I knew I'd an aunt, born just before WWII, twenty-one years before my father, who died in the womb. It didn't explain why there were all the Gérald's in their names. Nor did it tell me what colour their eyes were, or if they too would have scarified themselves for their children, or really anything besides the fact that we held the Barony of Calais and most of the family money came from some old vineyards on the Rivera, though Zacharie-Richard had done something in Algeria that'd bolstered the family after the Revolution.

My mother had the emerald eyes. So did I. And everyone had always said they'd never seen eyes like hers, that they'd know them anywhere… So it was impossible, right, that someone else could be walking around Hogwarts without anyone noticing that, hey, they looked like a replicate of my long-dead father and had my mother's eyes without saying something. I'd never seen anyone in my year like that…

Which meant Harry had to be something like my son – but again came the problems of the Draco-replicate and the Ron-replicate and Severus being, well, old enough to have a son that age but the wrong age for that son to be mine, looking like my family tree. But, if Harry was his son, why call him Potter, not Snape?

I think I've gone through this all before. I've been looping through thoughts of late, what with all the search for something of Ravenclaw's that might house a thirty-second of Riddle's soul.

Harry wedged his Advanced Potions-Making behind a birdcage in a cupboard and, with a pause, grabbed the most hideous statue of a warlock ever seen and placed it atop, so as to find it again, I supposed. With another pause, he placed a frizzing wig slowly blinking from lemon yellow to sky blue and back again with an old-fashioned tiara to identify it.

His fingers lingered for a moment on the tiara – and I felt the chill darkness of evil stun me out of my dreams. The distant roar of some great feline called me home.

I woke with a start that, luckily, did not wake the baby – my Claudia – in my arms. For a moment I floundered in her perfection, then I brushed a thin, wispy baby lock back with my finger and looked up, quite pleasantly amused to see Severus looking more haggard then I'd seen him even after a Death Eater meeting, dozing in a chair he'd conjured up for himself. Whatever my dreams, they were only dreams, and living one dream was enough for me.

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As might be expected, Claudia-Éléonore Séléné, called Claudia for convince, caused a bit of a stir. I spent the first week in our apartments, mostly, very tired but happy, and doting on my daughter. My daughter. I was scared to death when I wasn't holding her that I'd do something wrong and hurt her but, when I held her I knew I just knew that everything was going to be okay. Claudia would have everything I'd never had, I swore that. I wouldn't die on her. And neither would Severus. And we'd raise her, and she'd be happy, and there'd be no cupboard-under-the-stairs for her. There'd be family – I'd already found a very handy, old-school sort of naming ceremony that was popular amongst the Russians (handy thing, researching a strannik like Rasputin) that required four grandparents and three godparents, as well as, naturally, the two parents and the baby – however much I had to connive the stand-ins for our deceased parents: Dumbledore, McGonagall, Sirius and (in exchange for an interview with L'Officiel and Wizarding Motherhood) Ari, or convince those I wanted to be godparents (Fleur, Hermione, and Remus, which, by extension, included Bill, Ron, and Tonks) to be godparents.

The next Monday, however much I loved hanging about in the rooms, loosing sleep and entertaining the succession of professors and staff spouses (Flitwick's wife, Caroline "Carlie" Byers-Flitwick was a particular favourite, and very helpful with how-to-burp-a-baby, how-to-change-a-diaper, and all those things I'd never learned before – and I learned far more about the Flitwick's two grown children then even six years at boarding school had taught me), friends, and family like Sirius, the Weasleys, and Tonks, I was more then ready to get back to the normal swing of things. So I found a uniform that fit my reduced size, wiggled myself and Claudia into the baby-sling, and filled my schoolbag with emergency supplies of cloth diapers.

"This is Hogwarts," I told her, wandering the halls while everyone else was still at lunch. With her steel-grey eyes, she watched everything, listening intently to everything I said. Or it could only have been my imagination. I tended to attribute my own feelings to other people.

Paracelsus, who'd learned lullaby's for the occasion, was wrapped about my head like the world's strangest headband, offering commentary as we went. "Hogwarts is."

"A giant stone."

"Nest with many, many."

"Scale-lessss two-leggersss."

"Who say strange thingsss."

"And wave sticksss about."

"And don't appreciate."

"A good song."

With a sigh, I hissed back, "You've know idea if she can even understand Parseltongue yet."

"You don't know," Sus said fairly in return, "if she understandsss English either,Mère."

I continued anyway. "This is Hogwarts. It is our home. It is a school, and a fortress, and a museum, and the most beautiful and strongest and grandest place in the world. You'll always be safe here. The people who love you can always be found here. If you've ever a problem, it can be fixed here."

"Aren't you being melodramatic, Mère?" Par asked.

The centre head said back for me, "It'sss not melodrama if it's truth."

"Anyway, this is the Charms corridor. Professor Flitwick teaches here – that's Ms. Carlie's husband, Benjamin and Matthew's father. You remember Ms. Carlie, Benjamin, and Matthew, don't you?"

Sus again, "I'm not sure how good a week-old, scale-lessss potential-Speaker'sss memory isss."

"I found a mouse over there, once," Acel added, not entirely sensibly, and went back to humming what was either Fauré's "Pavane for a Dead Princess" or Haz-Mat's "So This is What Becomes of Us," I wasn't sure which.

I groaned and went through the castle like that, explaining little things to my little girl while the halls were empty, more than occasionally hissing back and forth with Paracelsus as his heads disagreed with something I said, added comments of their own, or talked amongst themselves about strategy for their next game of ultra-backgammon with Archimedes, which in some part involved moving the stars so Virgo was in the Fifth House and finding out if eggplant was fruit or vegetable. I didn't have the heart to tell him he couldn't make the stars move to suit his will, he was, like an older brother, having a difficult time having a younger sibling he had to share me with and he couldn't even talk to yet, if ever. Plus, the idea of him tying rockets onto the stars of the constellation Virgo was hilarious, especially as he was going to try to see this evening if Hedwig could fly him up there. I'd a brilliant smile on by the time I'd entered the DADA corridor, which was still empty but for a First or Second Year sitting on the floor with her nose in a book. I'd seen her in other halls at other times. A Ravenclaw, most defiantly, but I couldn't remember her name. It was either Abby or Amy, I was pretty sure. I waved as I entered Severus's classroom.

He looked up, not in surprise, but in well-disguised curiosity. For those like me who could read him, the pleasure he felt in seeing me was not disguised at all, and he actually let loose a smile when he saw I'd Claudia with me. Careful not to jostle our daughter, I kissed him in greeting and felt his hands go around my waist as he lifted me up and onto his desk, so we were at eyelevel. That, or he felt I shouldn't be on my feet yet and didn't remember there was a chair behind him.

"I thought I'd show Claudia the castle." I couldn't help my own grin as his eyebrow rose in query. "It's never too to learn the trick stairs and hidden passages." In eleven years, she'd be a student here, I was already thinking. I'd be twenty-eight that August. How far off that still seemed.

"Don't you think you should let her learn them on her own?" said his movement, his quiet, "Hmmm," as he finished writing the day's lesson on the blackboard. The stronger Shielding Charms and ways to break them; even Ron might find this class interesting, though he, like Sirius, still disliked my husband on principle. "It builds character," it looked like he'd continue if he'd said anything if the first place, "sharpens the mind."

To which I responded aloud, "Think of it this way: the more she learns now, the more things we don't know about she'll be likely to discover in the future."

He turned about, black eyes saying, "And that's a good thing how?" while he actually said, "Indeed."

Looking up from Claudia, a strand of hair escaping my boring but serviceable ponytail and falling annoyingly across my eyes, "I couldn't spend another moment 'in seclusion' if you paid me. If you want your wife sane, you'll just have to settle for your daughter potentially getting into mischief a decade from now."

With a derisive snort, he set the chalk down, crossed in two long strides the space between us, with chalk-dusty fingers (like rosy-fingered dawn, the thought came unbidden) gripped me with that way of his and kissed me hard. I could feel Paracelsus's weight shifting to get a better view even as my tongue ran along Severus's bottom lip. They parted easily for me, and I'd a very enjoyable moment before Paracelsus, tapping me on the head with one of his, saw fit to comment, "The pompousss he-badger."

"Isss fish-gaping at you."

"Asss isss the Lion-who-caresss-for-plantsss."

Surprised and blushing (but only a little; the blush was something I had learned for show. Never too sure of yourself – that made people call you haughty and arrogant and hate you – but never too mousy – people hated a mouse, unless it was in books where the mouse grew up to be strong. You had to make the people love you even though their love was tough because their hatred was tougher and their indifference impossible for once such as she), I disengaged myself, moving my hands to check Claudia, how yawning a little, hadn't been too jostled. "Hi Ernie, Neville," I said, now turning around. Their mouths hung open a little, like fish, though Neville seemed to shake this off the fastest. He set his books down and, seeming to forget Severus for a moment, came to me.

"So this is her, then?"

Moving the blanket a little so that her perfect face with their closing steel-grey eyes was visible, I nodded. "Claudia-Éléonore Séléné." I could already tell her nose might be a bit on the unfortunate side, and maybe, when she was older, she'd wish she'd my eyes, her grandmother's eyes, or a name that wasn't francified, but I knew I'd always call her perfect. It would probably annoy her, when she got to that stage when everything I did would annoy her. I'd be starting my thirties when she was in her teens. It should prove to be interesting.

Oddly bluntly, "I expected her to be wrinklier."

"Wrinkly?" Why on earth would my daughter be wrinkly?

"I dunno," Neville said, blushing a little (and this not faked at all) and pulling back. "I just think I expected babies to be wrinkly, like old people."

Snorting a little at this, I called over to Ernie, who, after all, wasn't one of my favourite people in the world, but he was still a decent bloke and hadn't sulked about after I turned him down and I still had to work beside him in Potions. "It's not like she's going to bite."

Severus, pleading off in his way, which was to say just leaving, no pleading or any warning being given, could be heard muttering as he busied himself away from the new baby fuss, "Only for lack of teeth." I put it to his not yet being used to any sort of positive attention.

Acel, however, seemed to find this fact disconcerting, hissing, "She hasss no fangsss?" with concern, slip-and-sliding down my pony-tail onto the collar of my robes, and from there down the sling. When Claudia next yawned, which wasn't long considering I'd been putting her down for a nap about this time, Acel poked his head into her mouth and took a look around, pulling out just before he could get gummed. "She hasss no fangsss! How do you expect her to catch her food, Mère?" he turned on me, as if it were my fault she was toothless.

"Human babiesss don't catch their food; their parentsss feed them."

"You've never given her a mouse, not that I've seen."

I looked helplessly at Neville and Ernie, and offered Paracelsus my wrist like I had when he was still a young Runespoor. Well, he was still a young Runespoor, but now he knew people had names instead of "the dungeon-man" and "the pompous he-badger," just didn't use them. He slid onto it a little too quickly to be casual and was now a distinct weight there, wrapped twice around my arm. He was big and awkward, still, in so many ways he was my son-who-was-not-my-son. There'd always be a tangled distinction between Paracelsus and Claudia as firstborn in my mind, I could already tell. "Human babiesss don't eat mice."

"Roachesss?"

I crinkled my nose, "No roachesss either. Humansss are mammalsss, and mammalsss give their babiesss milk."

If Acel had a nose – or Par or Sus for that matter – he'd have crinkled it. "Milk?"

"You've seen me breastfeed Claudia."

After a moment, "That'sss icky," Par added decisively. The other two agreed.

The rest of the class was beginning to file in now too – Ron, Hermione, Dean, Susan, Justin, all the members of the DA who'd been Fifth Years last year, as well as Nott, Zabini, Greengrass (Daphne, not her sister Astoria whom it must be admitted even Severus didn't care for), and Malfoy, of course, and a handful of Ravenclaws who'd made it on their own, - so I decided it was time to pack up. I wouldn't let Claudia near Malfoy with a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole. "See you later," I resisted the urge to add, "Sev," just to see Ron cringe. I might save that for later.

Whatever he might have said, he didn't. "Care to demonstrate your praesidis?"

I conjured a bassinet – Carlie Flitwick had shown me that one; the advantages of being married to a Charms Professor – behind his desk, the furthest point in the room from Malfoy. Safest. There was a reason why Herod Antipas had all the infant boys killed, him and others like him in history: you leave one alive, and he, or she, is bound to want vengeance. It'd happened with me, hadn't it? I'd not give Malfoy the chance. "Love to," I said.

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It may sound if my life had turned all milk and honey, and, in many ways, that's because I had. Though I'd the sneaky gene, I'd never cared much for the actual keeping-things-that-shouldn't-be-a-secret part of sneaking, and not having any of those – things-kept-secret-that-shouldn't-be – of late was doing wonders for my complexion. Or something. That was the excuse I gave when people asked me why I was so happy when there was a war of sorts going on around us (this question came mostly from the DA quarter, and then from the members who hadn't belonged last year and joined this out of fear) and people were dying and what not. To them I said, "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." Hermione – and, surprisingly, Alycone – gave me a curious look at that. Then again, I'd caught her explaining to Paracelsus what a Cardassian, as well as most of the rest of the Star Trek universe, was after I'd told her one day that he still asked me about that when I brought up the Maquis. He, in turn, tried to explain it to me once or twice. I swore that I "[…] will never again mention love or death inside a house, and I swear I will never translate myself at all, only to him or her who privately stays with me in the open air." He'd sung the latest UK #1 Single at me, which shut me up for the most part. We were a strange family, but we worked.

So, here was me, with the happy front, which wasn't entirely a front, and a string of family members in case of emergency commandeered and Winky "stolen" from the kitchens (though I did ask her if she'd mind caring for a baby again, and she'd gone and done a Dobby on me, she was so happy at the prospect, so it wasn't as if she minded doing it) to be nanny at the times when I had classes. But I couldn't forget about the Horcruces that were still out there. I couldn't forget about Rowena, who'd gone by the name Faolán for the best part of her life, but had let one man in on her secret (at least) or been found out or something like, and had a daughter who died just after she did, leaving her without some grand Heir that might pop up. Helga had a dozen or so living that could reliably trace back to one of her three children, Slytherin's last was dear Mr. Riddle (whom I personally doubted could father any more in his current state), and Gryffindor's line was so muddled that anybody could be his heir or no one at all…

I don't know what I was searching for, Rowena's own "Chamber of Secrets" perhaps, some hereto unknown portrait of her wearing some bit of jewellery that might be extant and turned vessel for fellow Founder's somethingth-great-grandson?

And then it was early June, and I was investigating every inch of the school, leaving Claudia with Winky for an hour before breakfast or, maybe, after curfew, and sometimes, if the bug caught me, on my way back from Charms or Transfiguration, just opening doors. I'd forgotten all about the dream I'd had after giving birth, the way I'd forgotten about the others.

And then one day I opened the door to Myrtle's bathroom, and found the ghost comforting a crying Draco inside.


	25. forget-me-not

It was the eighteenth of June I saw him last. I remember it so clearly, it almost hurts. It was a bright, sunny summer day in the way days are in mid-June in Scotland, before it got too hot and muggy to make you need to retreat inside the thick castle walls or under earth, where it was cool, or a cooling spell would stick. There was a lemony tint to the air, bathing everything in butter cream and saffron.

And I was stuck inside. That morning was the practical for my DADA NEWT, and, though it was difficult, it was mostly because I wasn't used to having to explain my thoughts on Defence in such a manner. Usually, when I was explaining something to Severus, we could go from A to G to P together, but NEWTS, or so I'd been told, required all of the alphabet, not just the ones I took to be understood. The practical was much easier, and my Patronus still wowed the examiners. I'd do well on it. I knew I would. I'd survived Voldemort, I'd pass this NEWT.

Leaving the test, I was positively beaming, so sure in myself was I. Acel had even broken into song.

"Alasss, my love, you do me wrong, to cast me off discourteously," he'd begun before I was even out the great hall doors, deciding to head up to Severus's classroom rather then straight down to Claudia. She'd be sleeping anyway, and, as much as I loved my now two-month-old daughter, Severus was, frankly, the better company at this point in time.

Par, naturally, had joined in, while Sus did the serpentine equivalent of and eye-roll, "For I have loved you well and long, delighting in your company."

"Greensleeves," I joined them, to my surprise, quietly, "was all my joy. Greensleeves was my delight, greensleeves was my heart of gold, and who but my lady greensleeves?"

A First Year – someone I didn't know well, only by sight, and how undoubtedly thought me strange for being the Girl-Who-Lived, married to a professor, a mum, carrying around a Runespoor (take your pick) – looked at me oddly as I passed. I felt the heat rise to my cheeks, but didn't much care. I was done caring, at least as far as things like that was concerned.

"Your vowsss you've broken, like my heart, oh, why did you so enrapture me?"

"Now I remain in a world apart, but my heart remains in captivity."

The chorus I hummed this time, and they took up the verse again: "I have been ready at your hand, to grant whatever you would crave."

"I have both wagered life and land, your love and good-will for to have."

I entered Severus's classroom, where the Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw Second Years were taking a test of their own, under my breath finishing, "…and who but my lady greensleeves?" as I went to his desk. A few heads raised, but most, being Ravenclaws, ducked down shortly and the rhythm of quills-on-parchment was not disturbed. Two giant tomes were before him, as was a sheave of papers with his tight, sharp writing running closely from side to side: he was researching magical poisons and artificial venoms that the parents of school-aged children would, most likely, have not liked their children's professor researching in front of them. If Basilisk venom destroyed the diary Horcrux, admittedly the weakest if my drawn-and-quartering idea held true, what could we use to destroy the others, if we ever found them? Thus the poisons.

He didn't notice me at first, his quill, long and dark, making minuscule notes about this process or that ingredient. Or maybe he did, and just pretended not to. He had, after all, told me to stop by whenever I was done and tell me how it went. I got the feeling, some of the time, that he did sneaky things like that just for practice, even if he wasn't a spy anymore. Still, he'd not looked up from his papers when I knelt down beside him and whispered in his ear, "It went well." My breath felt warm and sweet (I'd sucked on peppermint candies the whole time; McGonagall was a big proponent of peppermint, saying it helped your memory and boosted your concentration, and had foisted a bag on me this morning) in such close quarters, and his own minty smell was unmistakable.

Setting down his quill, he motioned behind him, at the stair that led up to his new office, where we could talk without interruption. I set Paracelsus atop the wet ink and told him to proctor the class, Sus nodding like an overzealous cadet as Acel continued, on his own now, to sing "Greensleeves." My breath tasting of him, I followed him into his office and could hear, "… Ah, Greensleevesss, now farewell, adieu, to God I pray to prosper thee, for I am still thy lover true; come once again and love me…" before the silencing spell went up, and I could hear not but him.

"You were right – well, obviously, you teach the class – but they did focus a lot on Dark Detectors on the written. And spells for and against fire – 'cause of the Inferi, I guess," I babbled a little, probably because I'd had to be so quiet during the NEWT while the Seventh Year students looked at me with various degrees of veiled jealousy.

There was a pause, and I moved to lean against the wall by the door, tired of sitting. "Give you more time for Claudia," was what he said, not sitting either, but standing in front of me with a most peculiar look I couldn't immediately place. There was another pause after my assenting sound. My bubble of happiness wasn't sinking, per say, but it felt heavy, the way helium feels heavy to hydrogen. When he spoke, I was inclined to label it resigned curiosity or maybe even fear – fear of a man who'd promised himself he'd go quietly, no matter what, after finding the key to happiness and being told he could never, ever have it. They were slow, his words, and measured, "Éléonore… do you… resent me, for Claudia?" as if coming at great expense across great distance.

I felt my brows scrunch together, then lift as my eyes, which had momentarily crossed, filled with an understanding light and lifted to look into his. He was tall. Not extravagantly so, but enough for me to need to look up. "Resent you, Sev'rus? How could I resent you? I know more love at your hands in an hour then I had my entire childhood. You've given me every happiness I could ever dream of – and quite a few I didn't know to imagine," I told him, going the short distance between us and melting into him, my arms around his neck, as I tilted my head upwards. "I wouldn't have kissed you if I didn't love you. I wouldn't have loved you if I didn't trust you. I wouldn't have trusted you if I hadn't sussed you for you, not the persona you put on. But I did, so I do, and I know you well enough to know you love me too. I know you didn't propose because of Claudia, but because of me. Sure, it might have been better if we waited, but," I continued in the same breath, before the tightening of his eyes had finished, "it also might also not've been, so I refuse to think of it, and so should you." I kissed his chin – the best I could reach without his help, and leaned against him. "I love you – that's one true thing I know. You loving me makes two. And two true things is a lot more than some people have. You can buy me a pony or something if you feel you have to prove it to me, but I'm content right here, so long as you don't make me grade any of those papers out there – I'm wiped for all things educational today."

I pulled myself away just a little, pulling my wand from my pocket and waving it at the nearby phonograph before turning back into him. The machine was a remnant of Remus's year as professor and, as Bach's "Concerto for Two Violins," began the first movement, I struggled for a moment in my mind, trying to decide if the record was a leftover too.

"Why a pony?" he asked, voice still a little brusque as he watched curiously my efforts to unbutton his collar.

"Isn't that what little girls are supposed to want? Ponies?"

"Having never been a young girl, I wouldn't know."

"Having never been a little girl in the position to ask for anything, I wouldn't know either. We'll ask Claudia when she's older." I was kissing the V of his neck now, still working on the rest of his hundreds of buttons, hoping to distract him before he asked what I was doing.

"I think I ought to refuse if she asks for one," he explained his reasoning before I'd a chance to pause in my labours, which he was now returning as his own, wonderful hands were un-tucking my shirt. "The riding. Dreadfully perverse, teaching young girls too ride: all the sexual metaphors."

"I can already see you'll be dreadful to all her boyfriends."

"And you'll no doubt be helping her meet up with them so that she thinks I don't know about it."

"Naturally. It's what mums are supposed to do – Madam Pomprey made me sign the contract while I was in labour; didn't you get yours? I commiserate, you forbid – that's generally how it goes. Since Claudia's the first, I get to make her my confidante and pass onto her the secrets of the moon, or whatnot. It's all very ancient and in all sorts of books."

"How parochial," his lips smiled against mine as he helped me to reach them, hands sliding around my waist to lift me up. Soon I felt the hard press of stone behind me, bracing me at the right height as I explored places I'd never, not in a hundred years of marriage, would ever know all the secrets of.

I could have said something about the parochially of a professor and a schoolgirl, no mater what circumstances, in a silenced office while twelve-year-olds took a test in the room outside, but it didn't need saying. Neither did, "I love you," but I said that anyway.

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"Severus?" I asked, fixing my uniform.

"Yes?" he said with his eyes, so very dark but, for him, truly windows to the soul. If you knew how to open the curtains and raise the blinds and decrypt what was inside. Mine were not nearly so hard to interpret and so, seeing them, with what much have been poorly-veiled and unstoppable curiosity, "No," he said aloud, "I don't resent your getting pregnant either. As you said, the timing could have been better, but who am I to deny the world a part of yourself?"

I smiled at him curiously, "You always say the strangest things about me. You'd think I was something special from the way you go on about me."

Then he had one of those moments he sometimes had, when I wasn't sure if he was serious or not. "Éléonore," he said, with great confidence, "if you're not 'something special,' I don't think I want to know what is."

Petulantly, "People keep saying that, giving me all sorts of things I don't want just for staying alive" – the new Minister had been forced to owl me my Order of Merlin, second class, because I never bothered to show up at the ceremony. Not that I'd told him I was coming to the ceremony in the first place, he just rather assumed – "or killing people." He snorted a little, then opened the door for me, the silencing spell breaking as he did so. He might even had said something if I hadn't listened for a moment to what was going on below and muttered, "No, no, no."

Paracelsus was treating the class, which was still, largely, concentrating on their tests, thankfully, to a song.

The only good thing I could say about it was, at least it wasn't a pop song. No, my Runespoor must have discovered the classical stations on the radio that was, sadly, his and was now singing "Nessun Dorma."

"...None shall sleep! None shall sleep! Even you, O Princessss, in your cold bedroom," (Merlin above, French was bad enough, but now Italian? Was there something I missed, in all my readings, about different variants of Parseltongue? I knew it was Italian, but it sounded Parcel-English to me…), "watch the starsss that tremble with love and with hope!"

Acel gave a small bow of his head to the uninterested crowd, then turned towards Par, who took up the tune, "But my secret is hidden within me; none will know my name! No, no!" while Sus tried to attack him over the middle head. This didn't work so well, so he tried to bite the dreamer head, though this too failed miserably. "On your mouth I will say it when the light shinesss!"

"And my kissss will dissolve the silence that makesss you mine!" I picked up the snake by his tail and rapped his heads against the desk.

"Just what do you think you're doing?" I asked.

"Vanish, o night!" was Acel's answer.

Sus's was more helpful, if only barely: "Modern opera ariasss," before attempting to cheerily maim his siblings once more.

"Puccini," I told Severus and the one or two Ravenclaw's who finished already. I'd seen his test – listing the six primary types of DADA magic, I remember, was the first question. I'd not even heard until Third Year there were any types at all, and not until I'd started self-study last year that I learned there was a difference between Augmentative and Aggressive. Poor kids, but they had to learn it sometime – and knew it was difficult, so we shouldn't be having this conversation at all, but what could I do. "He's given up on the Spice Girls and moved on to Puccini." I was tempted to add that this was proof that there was no God, but you didn't go saying things like that, even in Wizarding schools; and, besides, if there is and he's the one seeing to it that I stay alive, I don't want to go offending him. Or whatever's out there. Who am I to know?

"Set, starsss! Set, starsss!" the first two heads sang together, so, shaking my head, I kissed Severus on the cheek for the kids' benefit (and even he made a slight face as that, though I doubt the students noticed) and headed out the door. "At daybreak I shall win!" they hissed rather too loudly for comfort. I banged them against the desk of a Ravenclaw who'd finished already and was reading a book with an unmoving picture of a dark-skinned elf with stark white hair – Abby or Amy or Ali, or something like that, I remembered – who looked at me oddly then flipped a page. "I shall win! I shall win!" Luckily the song ended then, and sealing the Runespoor in my pocket was enough to quiet him, for the moment, at least.

I was busy contemplating this change in snake song choices and how it might reflect upon my future sleep patterns as I started opening the Marauder's Map. I'd searched the dungeons and the first floor in my little free time since Claudia's birth and decided to take advantage of Winky's helpful nanny-ing for an afternoon's exploration of the second floor. Who knew what more exciting things I might find there? APWBD was here, 1895 (found in a charred cupboard off an old Potion's classroom, which had a rather large, black crater in the centre and a matching smoke-stain above)? Removable stones with intoxicating powders and dusty butterbeer bottles hidden inside? A second Chamber, one designed by a different founder, hidden from the world that hadn't searched for it, with the Horcrux Voldemort had made of one of Ravenclaw's jewels or, I dunno, the bloody belt buckle of Gryffindor?

Nothing in the first empty classroom I searched, nothing but a false bottom on one of the student's desks, holding answers to a test decades gone. The second wasn't even so interesting, with not a secret inside, at least not one that careful searching and Auror-learned revealing spells might show. I was going to have to find an Unspeakable to get anything stronger, I expected, or make one up myself. Or adopt a family member who knew such things. Let's see… Tonks was an Auror, no need to change there; Ari a lawyer; Bill had passed some great books on wards and ward-breaking my way, while Fleur was, against all odds, as good with the maths as she was with clothes and hair things. Hmm… Remus did tonnes of stuff for the Order, distributing information where it needed to go and getting word from the Muggle side of things, and all of that, and, besides, was the professor sort. Maybe I could convince Sirius, who half the time I couldn't see as doing anything besides charming his newest motorbike to fly or perusing Car and Driver to be an Unspeakable? No. That'd never work. He'd been found innocent, of course, but he'd a temper to him and very little patience for people who'd thought he was guilty. Let him hang around – he was owed twelve years worth of idleness, I supposed. Besides, I was in the process of talking up Ari to him through our weekly letters with all the Slytherin-learned subtly I possessed and doing the reverse for Ari. With Tonks's help, and Remus's, who'd been teased one time too many for Sirius's good about dating Tonks.

Third door, broom closet (number thirty-five of one seventeen on the great "Make-Out in Every Hogwarts Broom Closet" crusade that'd been going on since the dawn, it seemed, of Hogwarts time), but still interesting as I discovered a door that was pretending to be a wall that had a marble sculpture of a weeping angel, weeping on what might have been a headstone. I checked.

George Golden

May – September 1528

it read. I closed the door and cast a strong locking curse on it so that no one looking for a snogging place would bother the dead, then added it to the map.

May, June, July, August, September. Five months, maybe less. Older than Claudia, but never getting older. I did not know why there was a child's tomb inside the school or who little George's parents might be in Hogwarts history, just decided that some things were better left unknown. Especially when your two-and-a-half month old is downstairs with your house elf.

The next couple of doors I didn't open, knowing there to be students inside, and kind of wondered around aimlessly after that, going to one of the windows by the stairs and sitting down on one that I was certain didn't disappear or shock you.

Severus thought I was special, which I guess I already knew, but its was strange to hear it aloud. Or at all. Ten years in Azkaban South will do that to you…

I'd not thought about Azkaban South in a long time, and even then with only a I'm-glad-it's-over,-let's-not-think-about-it-again feeling to it, not the hereto normal homicidal rage…

The blood protection was still working on Privet Drive and would continue to do so until the first week of July. It worked off of Mum's sacrifice, no idea how, and the fact that Petunia and Dudley were the only living blood relatives that Mum and I shared…

Except that wasn't true now. I was my mum's daughter, yes, but Claudia was mine, wasn't she? She had the necessary bloodline. Couldn't we transfer the protection to her, and therefore our rooms in the dungeons, and, therefore, to the whole of Hogwarts? Well, maybe not the whole of Hogwarts, but it would help make the school even less attractive of an attack option for Voldemort…

Nothing big. That's what Voldemort had done since Halloween. He was preparing for something – he was nothing if not patient, someone who spent the better part of my life as a ghost-ish thing would have to be – and let his followers do random Muggle killings. The Muggle papers didn't connect them, just thought them some of your common, every day homicides and, occasionally, attributed a Muggle in a very convincing way to the crimes. There were a few things that might have been "the actions of a small fraction of radicals" or of Death Eaters, but without magic I didn't have, I could tell no more then anyone else which they were without being there, which was hard to do after Muggles got on the scene…

It probably wasn't the right thing to do, use my daughter that way. But wasn't that what parents had done to their children all throughout history – use them? All the books say so, and I trust the books, never having known my own. Besides, it wouldn't hurt her, especially when all it did was make her mum safer, and nobody wanted their mums to be unsafe, did they? I dunno. Severus might've wished death on his mum, and his dad too, but I don't know the details there and probably won't ask, not for many, many years. It's enough to know they were evil in the lower e sense of the word. Like the Dursleys. There were just some things we had to hide from ourselves, repressing until we were so far from the past that we could begin to think about it clearly. And then we might each talk about our experiences.

A muffled, "Can I?"

"Come out?"

"Now, Mère?"

With a sigh, I unseal my pocket and watch the Runespoor slither onto the stone step next to me. "Are you going to apologize?"

"What?"

"Did I?"

"Do?" Sus blinked at this, realizing what he'd said, then continued, "Do? You two were singing Turandot rather annoyingly and loudly to the young badgersss and ravensss."

"Not all of Turnadot. Par and I were only singing the most famousss arias of the modern era," the middle head said snobbishly, looking at a spot below my knee with some curiosity before flicking his tongue at it and going, for all intensive purposes, asleep.

"Acel'sss right. We were singing "Wie Sie Fassen, Wie Sie Lassen" from Tristan und Isolde before that."

"Tell Par and Acel to stop, Mère."

"Tell Susss to stop being so mean."

"Tell Par to stop being so annoying."

"Tell Susss that he'sss an ugly, tyrannical, stupid – flobberworm!"

Acel snored.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. Tightly. "Par? You and Acel aren't to sing while in classss anymore, is that clear?"

Whinging, "But Mère-"

"And Susss, you're to stop being so mean to your brothersss."

"And Par and Acel aren't being mean to me all the time? It was bad enough when they discovered how to work the radio and the pop music stationsss, and the Muggle stationsss, and WPR – but opera isss where I draw the line!"

"Classical music," Par said through gritted fangs, "helpsss calm and relax the scale-lessss onesss, and promote intelligence."

"He heard that on WPR," Sus tattled.

"Yes, and you also heard that I was sending Claudia to be raised by elfin Buddhist monksss outside New Haven, and that you were twelve feet long and trained to attack studentsss at will. Isss any of that true?" The heads looked jointly puzzled as they considered this. "No, it isn't," I reminded them.

"But I wasss just trying to be grown-up, Mère!" Par protested.

Snorting, "You'll never be grown-up, Par; you'll alwaysss be the shortest!"

"That'sss not true, Susss, and you know it! Acel isss a full quarter-inch shorter then me."

"Someone call me?" the middle head sleepily, lifting himself up and looking in every direction but that of his brothers.

"Shut up, Acel!" they shouted together.

With a serpentine shrug, he did and went limply back to his snoozing. "Why can't you three get along?"

"Because," said Acel, still seemingly asleep, "we are not three but one divided, just as you are one multiplied upon itself," and, with that, the middle head started for a course towards the railing of the stairs. When he had slithered up its length and onto the banister, the heads turned back towards me, Par with an amused look, Sus with one of exasperation, and Acel a dreamy-eyed one I'd seen on Luna Lovegood when one saw Luna at all. "I – we – can see thingsss that cannot be seen with eyesss alone. You are old, Mère, older then your sixteen summersss. Old soulsss like yoursss are often called upon in Dark daysss, because they know thingsss, because they have seen thingsss that younger ones do not believe. I do not know if you are old, Mère, or if old thingsss have aged a young one. But you are old, old onesss are often divided against themselves." And then, more brightly, "Like me," before slip-sliding down the flights to the basement.

"I'm going to Claudia," Par added as they descended, whooping while Acel began in on a more familiar sound of The Impotent Delusion's latest annoyance.

I lay my head on my knees and tried not to think what damage this snake was doing to my mind. Though I had to admit it was nice, this being loved thing. A girl could get used to it. It was, after all, a nice change from the homicidal rage that, well, I won't say drove me, but that existed under my desire to escape.

I'd lived in a cupboard for ten years. It didn't break me – that was why Severus thought I was special, I think, - though they wanted it to. It'd been a difficult ten years, and I was only by what little luck I had that Vernon wasn't interested in me that way like it was in all the books you read about poor little downtrodden girls. You didn't need to be raped to be downtrodden – though that certainly didn't help manners any – or hit to be abused. Until I was sent to the public grammar, I'd thought that Azkaban South was all there was. I forget what I called it then, not Azkaban, but certainly not home. And then I discovered books, keys to other worlds. Fantasy, science-fiction, historical fiction – you name it, I read it. I remember one time the most clearly, from the very end of the last school year I spent in Surrey. The grammar shared its campus with the older kids, and after school sometimes I'd sneak into their library and read the books there so I didn't have to go "home." I'd found a copy of Midnight's Children and had just finished it when the librarian found me in the corner at half-past five in the evening, red-eyed. She asked if one of the older kids had been bullying me – true, but I'd stopped crying long ago over that. I denied it, of course, and opened the book and read the last sentence aloud for her. "Yes, they will trample me underfoot, the numbers marching one two three, four million five hundred six, reducing me to specks of voiceless dust, just as, all in good time, they will trample my son who is not my son, and his son who will not be his, and his who will not be his, until the thousand and first generation, until a thousand and one midnights have bestowed their terrible gifts and a thousand and one children have died because it is the privilege and the curse of midnight's children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace."

"You read that whole book?" she'd asked, amazed. I didn't see why at the time. "And you understood it?"

"Of course," I'd said, softly. I always spoke softly then. "I got to go. My aunt and uncle'll be expecting me."

She asked my aunt and uncle's names, but I didn't give it to her. I knew what she wanted – to move me up a grade or two; any teacher with a ten-year-old who could read Rushdie would have (though, admittedly, I understood it better when I reread it years later) – but knew equally well what would happen if she got her way. I couldn't be better then Dudley. I had to be a mouse, until I was old enough to make it on my own. I didn't know about Hogwarts then. I didn't know I could escape through something other then ink and paper and sweet-smelling binding glue then.

… both master and victim of my time, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace…

I could never die in peace. If Voldemort managed killed me, I doubted it would be in such a peaceful way as the Advada Kedavara. What a sobering thought.

Best to live in as best peace as possible then. Generally ignore the world at large except as it pertained directly to me (including all newspapers, magazines, radio talk shows, and generally any other form of communication with the outside world), that was the best thing to do. Who cared what they thought anyway? Next year I'd be graduated, maybe I should start looking for a house somewhere. Near the ocean. With rolling pastures. And apple trees; I don't know why, but I wanted apple trees. Plenty of space for Claudia to grow. Space for a lab for Severus. Space for an office for me, to do my random work with whatever obsessed me after Horcruces. Space to have cupboards large enough to sleep comfortably in. After I finished school, of course.

So never mind the rumours one heard, about why a thirty-seven-year-old professor might wed his sixteen-year-old student.

Or the things you heard, about neither of us really wanting Claudia.

Or about me, with my "Dark," singing Runespoor…

I heard the thin sound of a cry carrying, and before I knew it, I was halfway to the door it originated behind. I smiled softly to myself at that – God, I was turning into a proper mum – but continued anyway. I always did think Hogwarts left the young-'uns to themselves too much, without parents or adults to make sure they were happy and healthy and hale.

But it wasn't an ickle Firstie behind the door, which I realized too late was Myrtle's. It wasn't even Myrtle.

It was Draco.

All I needed to do was hear, before he saw my tentative opening of the door in his cracked and warped mirror, was his, "No one can help me. I can't do it… I can't… It won't work… and unless I do it soon… he says he'll kill me, if I don't kill her…"

And that was all I needed to hear. I spun, letting the door fall clatteringly shut, not caring if he heard, because I was already halfway up the staircase by then. Running, not caring who saw me, doing stupid leaps over fake and sticking stairs, and between on that was moving away from the landing (though, admittedly, it was only a foot away, even if it was six stories up).

And then I stopped. I was standing in front of the Room of Requirement, heart and head pounding, not knowing that I was doing. What was I doing? I didn't, until my thoughts caught up with me, even know why I had rushed up here so quickly.

And then it hit me. Draco, crying, like in my dream. Words Draco actually said, verbatim from my dream. Ergo, the dream was most likely not an ordinary dream. Ergo, everything in the dream probably had some semblance of truth to it. Ergo, the crown that had felt so Dark was probably real. A crown was a jewel a princess might have, might even fight to keep and sell last, even after she was no longer a princess. And it had to be something related to her princehood, something that made such a smart woman look weak and stupid and flighty. Ergo, if it wasn't something so Dark that even the Darkest feared it, it was still in the shadowy end of the spectrum of things-that-did-not-belong-in-boarding-schools.

The Room of Requirement, I was not surprised, quickly became the room I wanted. It was if the tiara that was certain to exist inside could be taken out of the room. Holodeck rules, Hermione had once said. A Star Trek thing. She explained it to Paracelsus, once. I didn't much care for the details – which miffed her, I knew, – at least not the sci-fi one. The magic alone was enough for me. It was the same either way, in the end. The Room of Requirement made things real inside the room; outside they would not exist. Ex nihilo venimus in nihilum revertimur, and all of that.

Merlin, I just used a deponent verb in a thought. I'm going crazy, chasing Horcruces in boarding school corridors, having licentious sex in professors' offices, arguing with a Runespoor over what songs two of his three heads could and could not sing. Absolutely bloody daft.

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I took stock of him unconsciously when we apparated onto the ledge before the cave. What strange and peculiar luck, to find a Horcrux in the school walls and a clue to, quite possibly, another elsewhere. It was a curious thing, good luck, and I was filled both with a sense of adventure and foreboding, as if, if too many good things came together at once, a consequence of dire proportions had to happen. That, if we managed to find another Horcrux and destroy the two we had… I don't know what might happen, but something. I personally was thinking Unforgivables…

I'd cast every Unforgivable but Imperio, having used the Killing Curse on Trixie on my wedding night and crucio some months before that. I'd every Unforgivable cast on me, and am the only one in the history of ever to survive the Killing Curse, which'll take someone a lot smarter then me to figure out why, because I don't believe for a second I'm the only person in history whose Mum died to protect them. So, when I say I really, really don't like Unforgivables, I have the full prospective…

Still, I tried to push this out of my mind, counting: two arms, two legs, one head. Check. Out of habit, I did it for Dumbledore too. Not that I had apparated us there myself – they don't want those in gravida apparating or portkeying more then necessary, and thus I'd missed the Ap. Ed. Class this year – but it was a habit I'd developed, making sure everything was in one piece when we arrived, so I knew when exactly everything had fallen to pieces – but still. He'd all his body parts too, as best as I could tell. His hair, like his beard, was long; the same shade of warm grey that, if you looked hard enough, still hinted that he had once been auburn. The same lines were etched into his face, his hands… In lieu of Severus's long-dead father, he stood as a much better loved and much more alive grandfather for Claudia, and would, as far as I was concerned, for any that might follow Claudia, in better days, when the war was over and happiness was allowed again. Dumbledore looked the part of a grandfather now, so very old and tired though, at the same time, as full of life as he had once been when he was my age and the world was a differently evil place. I thought right then that, despite all the mistakes he might have made, leaving me at Azkaban South, leaving Sirius at Azkaban proper, not telling me about the prophesy earlier, that I loved him. Not like Severus, naturally, but like a grandfather. I was proud to know him, proud that he could be part of my family, even as tenuously as a stand-in grandpa.

I could feel the cold chill of Darkness against the summer heat as surely as I smelt the salty sea-spray as it moistened the air around us.

Two Horcruces in one day. Things could surely not be going so well for the Light as this…

"Why here, sir?" I heard myself ask, a warming charm quick off my wand and as quickly dispelled once I realized the cold I felt was not going to disappear with something as simple as that.

"The nuns in charge of Saint Giles's Orphanage brought the children here annually as summer outing for a little sea air and a view of the waves – and not here, precisely, but the village behind us. No, I think it was only ever Tom Riddle and his youthful victims who visited this spot. Unless he or she were a mountaineer of some skill, no Muggle could make it down the cliff face; nor can boats approach this stretch of crag, the waters here are too turbulent and, in local legend, this area of coast is something Charybdis in nature. Young Riddle would most certainly have been interested in something so destructive, or," he said somewhat more sadly, "he only wished to torment the two small children he brought with him in private, though I do think the journey alone would have done it, don't you?"

I looked up the cliff and shuddered again, this time not at all because of the Darkness that poured so freely from the narrow opening at the edge of the water. I made a mental note to tell Claudia when I returned to Hogwarts (a quick nuntius sent to Severus to tell him where we were going and what had happened before we left would assure that he, at least, did not wonder where I was; I'd sent a second to Hermione, warning her I thought something was afoot and to keep the DA on speed-dial with her protean coins) that, under no circumstances, is she to take part in the torment of others, and that the news of such torment inflicted on her enemies is not to fill her with satisfaction or glee. Still, it made sense. Voldemort liked power, and who knew what power he'd felt he'd gained here? And the Darkness… my bones didn't rattle with it, but it even here filled me with a chill.

I would never have admitted it, not to Dumbledore but, of every shudder that shook me, at least a third – maybe even a half – weren't because of the foulness. No, you know those shudders that sometimes course through your veins, starting with a twitch at the neck and running down your spine, that feel so good, that you get because you feel so good? Maybe even half of my shudders felt that way. And that bothered me. "There are strange likenesses between us," I remember his memory, carried in his first Horcrux, told me, "Even you must have noticed. Both half-bloods, orphans, raised by Muggles. Probably the only two Parselmouths to come to Hogwarts since the great Slytherin himself. We even look something alike…" I felt disgusted with myself.

"But his final destination – and ours, -" Dumbledore continued, interrupting my thoughts, "lies a little farther on. Come." A flare of light burst from his palm, Alice Blue but very bright, illuminating the fissure at the base and sparkling off the quartz in the rock and the dark water.

We slipped into the cool, salty sea, Dumbledore doing a perfect breaststroke as we entered the partially submerged stone hall. Naturally, I was wearing the wrong shoes. Mary Janes, of course. And knee-highs, which, of course, would be ruined now. I could feel the silt clinging to my skin, slipping into my shoes… Hogwarts uniforms, or at least those for the female variety, are not meant for adventuring. Well, it'd give me an excuse to let Fleur take me shopping.

"Sir?" I asked, wading along as best I could, the water coming up to mid-chest and weighing down my robes and skirt, the walls of the cavern shadowy and spaced just far enough that I had to reach to keep my fingertips running along each one, guiding my way in the dark.

"Éléonore, my child," he said, scarcely turning, his form beginning to rise out of the water as the sea dropped back, "how many times have I asked you to call me Albus?"

"A hundred eleven," I informed him, "since Halloween. But only twice this week."

"Then let us make it a hundred twelve."

I ignored this. Hesitantly, I continued, pulling myself up out of the water, "What happened? In Voldemort's life, I mean, that made him turn out this way?"

"What happened to cause Tom Riddle, the once brilliant, if intimidating, boy of Mrs. Cole's memory to choose to shed his humanity and become the man, for lack of a better word, you know today? Ah… yes, this is the place."

Nodding, then realizing his back was still towards me as he examined the wider bit of cave we now stood in, I agreed. "I think so too." My traitorous shudders remained, even after I dried my clothes with a laundering charm that left me smelling lemony fresh as well. "I mean, though, sir, Voldemort is an orphan, but I am too… Life at Saint Giles can't have been much fun, but neither was my youth… Is it because I was famous when I came to Hogwarts – that people were disposed to liking me that I didn't turn out like him, or he like me? Is it because he let the Hat put him into Slytherin, and I argued against it? Or is it something genetic, and even if his mum had lived, and his dad had loved his mum, and the world was perfect he'd have been chosen to…"

"I cannot say, Éléonore," he said slowly as he circled the antechamber, feeling and touching with his right hand while his left still blazed with pale-blue fire. "Though I, of course, have my ideas. You yourself have said your aunt and unc-"

"Hated me then, hate me now, and probably will go on hating me until they're cold in their graves."

Sadly, "Yes… You've always been the subject of strong emotions. Love, from not only young Lily and James, but from Sirius, though he was in Azkaban, and from myself and many, many others long before you ever stepped through Hogwarts's doors, from afar. And, yes, you've been the subject of hate; grew up surrounded in it – and for that I can never apologize enough, though, at the time, I thought that Petunia might love you, if only because you were Lily's daughter…" he drifted into silence for a moment. Then, "But Riddle… I don't believe anyone ever felt anything about him at all, until he was in Hogwarts and it had long changed him. Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike ...We wizards have mistreated and abused our fellows for too long, and we are now reaping our reward…"

I said, "Oh" at his point, and tried to follow what he was doing, which appeared to be running his hands along every inch of wall.

"When you've spent as much time as I, young Éléonore, around magic, you tend to discover that you've become… sensitive to the differences between them. Most wizards, to varying degrees, come to feel the presence of magic, though Nicolas and Pernelle mentioned that, after all their centuries, it came to be more of a… sound to them. Before they went into seclusion, I would occasionally find one or the other standing in Hogwarts, listening to the 'symphony' they heard…

"You are familiar with Muggle literature, yes?" the non sequitur hit me strangely as I contemplated the music of magic – something like Holst's "The Planets," I imagined. The joviality of the fourth movement, the mysticism of the sixth – but, after a moment, I nodded. "The closest thing to what magic is here is the ithildin Door of Durin in Khazad-dûm. If there were starlight, quite possibly the door would reflect it, but…" A little later, "Oh, surely not. So crude." I half imagined he'd continue, "Well, Mr. Riddle, an 'Exceeds Expectations' surely, for the magic, but I have to deduct points for plagiarism and the vulgarity of your necessitated payment."

"What is it, Professor?" I asked only when I thought he'd not continue, and I was very interested in as to why something that I could see and he could feel might be crude.

"The door will open with the right password. Or, in this case, payment."

"I doubt the door wants Galleons."

"Nothing quite that crude – it simply asks us to offer the door blood, which will break the enchantment. Momentarily, at least – there's a self-renewal spell embedded in the magic – but long enough for us to pass. The idea, as I am sure you will have gathered, is that your enemy must weaken him- or herself to enter. Once again, Lord Voldemort fails to grasp that there are much more terrible things than… personal… injury…"

Before I could finish, I'd rushed past him and, after pulling an extra hairpin from Paracelsus's pocket of interesting finds, sprinkled a few drops of blood upon the space he'd indicated, revealing, as the blood hit it, a silvery door of great design and, possibly, of great beauty before the door sank in upon itself and melted into an archway. "Well," I said, after he'd asked me just what, exactly, I had thought I was doing, "two things, really. One, that I wasn't about to let you do it, and, two, I thought if I asked you wouldn't let me." I'd spent enough time around Madam Pomprey to pick up a handful of minor healing spells, and the prick I'd made in my thumb wasn't that deep anyway, and patched myself up in no time.

Blood doors. What was next? No, I don't want to know. I liked adventure as much as the next girl but, God, blood doors?

Then a lake, filled, like the Dead Marshes, with bodies. Inferi. I once made a promise to myself to immediately stop reading any book that involved zombies, simply because they were so cliché, and really wanted to turn around and go running back to Hogwarts, not because I was scared or worried or felt any emotion other then disbelief, because these things couldn't just be real. But they were. It was one thing to read about things, another to live through them.

Because one had to keep one's promises. (My shudders, I was rightly pleased to notice, went nearly completely to the uncomfortable,-get-me-out-of-here type as we drew near it; then I realized what I was saying and stifled the urge to flee, bringing the headmaster along bodily if I had to, this God-forsaken place.)

Because I had a baby girl to take care of, a husband to go home to, and a future before me that could be as bright and beautiful as the sun, the moon; the stars. (Run. Run. Run! RUN!)

And so I force-fed my beloved headmaster the Advada Kedavara coloured potion. Because he asked me to. Because I promised. (Don't! Stop! This is wrong! Try something, try anything – just don't make him drink it. Let me, let me instead!)

When the potion was gone, I grabbed the Horcrux – the locket, I noted dimly – and pulled Dumbledore to his feet. We had to get out of here. We were going to get out of here.

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Only to die elsewhere, it seemed. Every inch of me was screaming a different thing. Find Claudia. Feed Claudia – it'd been hours since I'd seen my baby girl, and I'm ashamed to say I felt like a cow gone without milking and would shortly start lowing, and half thought I'd start leaking milk in the middle of some to-the-death battle, which would be so embarrassing. Make sure Claudia's safe in the mess that had become of Hogwarts. Make sure all the students were safe. Make sure Severus was safe. Make sure Severus knew the Dark Mark was hanging above the highest tower of the school. Keep Death Eaters Out. Protect my family. Protect my friends. Run. Run very, very far and fast. Shield Charms – fully body but magically draining, partial but easier to maintain more strongly, or general area with power to block arrows? Were there likely to be arrows?

We arrived, by broomstick, to the tower. It was only by the grace of whatever luck I had that there were no tortured bodies littering the landing. I leapt from the broom as soon as I reached the battlements, ignoring the twist my ankle took as I landed, and would have run down the spiral stair if it wasn't for Dumbledore, who I saw was having some trouble gathering the energy to rush, as I wanted to, though I was deadly tired and feeling half-mad and half-stupid, into whatever lay below, to protect whoever came in my way that needed protecting. I may have laughed about it earlier, but I am a bloody mother and if my hormones or whatnot are screaming at me to protect, protect, protect, I'm Gods-be-damned going to find someone to protect and I'll kill and maim and torture any blasted Death Eaters that got in the way. They weren't going to take anymore people away, destroy anything else. "Come on, sir. Dumbledore. Albus. We've got to stop them-" there had to be a them to stop, if there was a Dark Mark in the air above the school, unless some junior Death Eater wanabies had done it and, even then, that was something that needed to be stopped – "before they hurt anyone. It's our fault for leaving them here, remember? We've got to make sure they get us instead of hurting the little ones…" That there be no more Cedrics or Franks or Alices or, or, or-

Or little orphans hidden away in closets because what is left of their family doesn't love them or want them or even acknowledge they exist.

If I died, and Severus died, would they take little Claudia away from the spur of family I'd created for her? Would they send her to Petunia and Vernon on Privet Drive, because "they" said that it was too dangerous for her to live with her werewolf godfather or a quarter-Veela godmother and just ridiculous to let Hermione care for her goddaughter while studying for her NEWTS? What if "they" said that she couldn't live with Sirius and Ari at HQ, because Sirius couldn't cook worth a damn and Ari was barely in a fit mental state to care for her children even when they spent ten months out of the year at boarding school? And if Dumbledore said "they" had to send Claudia to Privet Drive, upon which no privets of any sort grew, only immaculate flowerbeds and rose bushes, I doubted McGonagall could put up enough of a fuss to talk him out of it, however much she might wish to take me away herself…

Luckily, Dumbledore seemed to collect himself at this, and took a stride towards the arch upon which strange and flickering lights played on the stairs, telling me to pull my invisibility cloak on so we could give those bastards (my words, not his) the proper payment for breaking into our school.

Unluckily, no sooner had I fastened my cloak did a petrificius hit me from behind and Draco step out of the archway before me. Albus's wand went flying over the ramparts as a disarming spell – a simple, student-cast disarming spell – robbed the strongest and greatest wizard alive of his wand. "Good evening, Draco," he said more calmly then even Severus had ever managed, and quite sounded like he was going to go on to saying what a beautiful night it was, shame the sickly green glow from the Dark Mark was obscuring the stars and casting its pale and deathly light onto them. It made everything look surreal, the light. The headmaster's face was a map spindly laugh-lines and ravines of worry, looking almost like Moody's in the macabre light, if Moody had both eyes and all his nose. Draco's, while so much younger, seemed to have developed a few of the later himself, bags larger then most carry-on luggage beneath his cloud-grey eyes.

Grey eyes that now darted about the top of the tower, as if looking for someone. "I know she's here," he said quietly. Shakily. "I know you're not alone."

"I could say the same for you."

It was the closest I'd ever heard Malfoy, proud and arrogant and just conceited enough to want to attack me properly, in front of witnesses who could, afterwards, say it was done honourably, come to sounding ashamed. "Yes. There are Death Eaters in Hogwarts tonight."

"Well, well. Very good indeed." I wanted to choke, I wanted to sputter, but I couldn't move, only blink as I stayed unwontedly trapped under a piece of fabric. I settled for thinking countercurses as loud as I could and growing more worried by the minute about Claudia and Severus and Hermione and Ron and Ginny and Oliver and Alycone and Neville and McGonagall and, and… "You found a way to let them in, did you?"

"Yeah," Draco didn't sound proud at all now, our sad, or anything other then very tired and very, very resigned. "Right under both your noses and you never realized."

"Ingenious. Yet… forgive me… where are they now? You seem unsupported."

"They met some of your guards. They're having a fight down below." From his tone, Draco might have been talking about dinner – mildly interested, yes, but far from the centre of his thoughts. I didn't notice the faint blue glow that was starting beneath my skin as I thought, Finte! Defrigidius! INFECTUS REDDERE! loudly, displeased to discover I was still petrified. "They won't be long… I came on ahead. I – I've got a job to do."

"Well, ten, you must get on and do it, my dear boy." I stared blankly at both of them, watching Draco stare blankly at the headmaster and the headmaster stare expectantly at the boy. Boy. Yes. He was as old as me, scarcely older, but he seemed so young… "Draco, Draco, you are not a killer."

"How do you know?" he snapped, sounding even younger then he looked. "You don't know what I'm capable of; you don't know what I've done!"

"Oh yes, I do." They were up to that tone you'd find in discussion of sports – slightly argumentative, but still polite, mostly – now. "You almost killed Katie Bell and several package handlers in the VIP Offices of the Owl Post. You have been trying, with increasing desperation, to kill Éléonore Snape all year." My blood ran cold. "Forgive me, Draco, but they have been feeble attempts… So feeble, to be honest, that I wonder whether your heart has been really in it."

Vehemently, "It has been in it! I've been working on it all year, and tonight-"

An echoing yell made its way up the spiralling stair and etiolated Draco's features further, until he was the colour of a corpse.

"Somebody is putting up a good fight. But you were saying… yes, you have managed to introduce Death Eaters into my school, which, I admit, I thought impossible. … How did you do it?"

But Draco remained silent, as I felt the rage build within me (and, unknown to me, the cerulean light growing stronger and threatening to burst from my pores, limning me with its glow).

It'd been me that Draco had been ordered to kill, that he'd be killed himself for if he failed. And, not just that, that necklace, those wedding presents that the VIP Office had received, were sent to me while I was still pregnant with Claudia. He'd been trying to kill not just me, which I could understand, but Claudia too. He'd been trying to kill my baby-

"… Killing is not so nearly easy as the innocent believe… So tell me, while we wait for your friends… how did you smuggle them in here? It seems to have taken you a long time to work out how to do it."

I'd never thought I'd see a lich look so sick, "I had to mend that broken Vanishing Cabinet that no one's used for years. The one Montague got lost in last year."

"Aaah." I wanted to rush to the headmaster, who was, for all intensive purposes, the closest thing to a grandfather that yet existed for me, the closest thing to a true father my husband had ever known, but I couldn't, though I half imagined my big toe twitching in my uncomfortably moist Mary Janes. He sounded in pain still from that devil-begotten potion. Add that to the fact that, if I didn't find Claudia soon and make sure she was safe, I might scream, and I was quickly moving into a frenzy of madness. "That was clever… There is a pair, I take it?"

"In Borgin and Burkes, and the make a kind of passage between them. Montague told me that when he was in the Hogwarts one, he was trapped in limbo but sometimes he could hear what was going on at school, and sometimes what was going on in the shop, as if the cabinet was travelling between them… Even Borgin didn't know. I was the one who realized there could be a way into Hogwarts through the cabinets if I fixed the broken one."

"Very good." ("How could I be good?" I wished I could scream. This time I was sure I felt a convulsion in my left leg. I looked. A quarter-inch of blue light was surrounding me now, I was now aware, and slowly it was pulling me out of petrifaction.) "So the Death Eaters were able to pass from Knockern Ally into the school to help you… A very cleaver plan… and, as you say, right under my nose."

"Yes. Yes, it was!"

"But there were times, weren't there, when you were not sure you would succeed in mending the cabinet? And you resorted to crude and badly judged measures such as sending Mrs. Snape a cursed necklace that was bound to reach the wrong hands… poisoning champagne there was only the slightest chance would get to her this decade from the VIP Office, let alone would be drunk right away, not when her family has so many older and better vintages in Château d'Nuages…"

"Yeah, well, she didn't realize who was behind that stuff, did she?" No, I hadn't. I'd thought it'd been Death Eaters – proper Death Eaters – or even the Diggorys, who knew I'd seen their son die two years ago and was now nearly his age, moving on with my life, having what Cedric could never have, now. "Snape didn't. And you didn't."

"As a matter of fact, I did. I was sure it was you. Severus had his own suspicions, and, as for Éléonore, she keeps her own council, but I wage she suspected."

"They why didn't any of you try to stop me!"

"I have…" I felt a welcome twitch in my thumb, "Now, about tonight. I'm a little puzzled about how it happened… You knew that I had left the school? But, of course, Rosmerta saw me leaving, and she tipped you off – she's under Imperious, I assume?"

"That's right…"

"So you decided this was the perfect time to go after Mrs. Snape?"

"We tried… that blasted Runespoor of hers wouldn't let us into her rooms. Bit Travers… he screamed something awful before he died. But she is a Gryffindor, after all, and if Death Eaters in the school didn't bring her out, I figured she'd gone with you, and Rosmerta didn't see her… We decided to put the Dark Mark over the tower and get you both to hurry up here, to see who'd been killed. And it worked!

"Well… yes and no… Am I to take it, then, that nobody has been murdered?"

His voice rose an octave. "Someone's dead. One of your people… Don't know who, it was dark… I stepped over the body… I was supposed to be waiting up here when you both got back, only your Phoenix lot got in the way…"

"They do tend to do that." The shouting was getting closer. I felt my wand hand begin to twitch a little now; my knees were starting to unfreeze. "There is little time, one way or another. You let us discuss your options, Draco."

"My options! I'm standing here was a wand – I'm about to find your precious Harry Potter and kill her –"

"My dear boy; let us have no more pretence about that. If you were going to kill her, you'd have done so already. You have sat in class with her all year; seen her in the library, alone; been in the Great Hall with her, passed her in the hall – and yet you have not tried to do anything to her more untowards then an accipicrines months ago! If you were really going to torture me or whatever you are thinking to find out where Éléonore is, you would not have stopped for this pleasant chat about ways and means."

"I haven't got any options! I've got to do it! He'll kill me! And what little of my family she hasn't killed, he will!"

"I appreciate the difficulty of your position. I can help you, Draco."

"No, you can't. Nobody can. He told me to do it or he'll kill me. And Mum. I've got no choice."

"He cannot kill you if he thinks you already dead. Come over to the right side, Draco, and we can hide you more completely then you can possibly imagine. What more, we can send members of the Order to your mother tonight and hide her likewise. Nobody would be surprised that you died in your attempt to kill Éléonore – forgive me, but Lord Voldemort probably expects that either Éléonore or myself will kill you tonight. Nor would the Death Eaters be surprised if we were to captured and kill your mother – that is what they would do themselves, after all. Come over to the right side, Draco… you are not a killer…"

Slowly, though his wand didn't move, "I got this far, didn't I? They thought I'd die in the attempt, but I'm here… and I'm the one with the wand… She deserves it, too, for what she did to Dad… To Aunt Bellatrix… and you're at my mercy…"

"No, Draco. It is my mercy," I stumbled as, at last, the petrificius broke. With one hand, I pulled my cloak off, "and not yours that matters now," with the other I pointed my wand at Malfoy, who was already turning his on me, shrouded in blue light that seemed black from the Dark Mark above as I was. A stupefy was half out of my wand as the death-green, twisting light I knew poured from the barrel of his.

I thought of Severus, and my attempts to make him let himself love me. I thought of the night he asked me to marry him, of our first kiss, the night I found out about the prophesy; the day he first held our daughter and said with his eyes, "How could something so wonderful have happened to me?"

I thought of Sirius, and his attempts to be a father to me. I thought of the night he told me he'd adopted me through a locked door and threatened to marry me off to Fred if I didn't stop seeing Severus, of the night I found out he was innocent and said I could come live with him if I wanted, of the day he became free at last; of last Christmas morning, when he said he'd have bought me a motorbike if he'd thought I could keep my balance on it with a Quaffle under my shirt; of the day he walked me down the aisle and gave me away to his most hated enemy, doing it only because it was what I wanted and he wanted me to be happy.

I thought of Tonks, and her attempts to make Remus let himself love her. I thought of Remus, and his attempts to make Tonks make herself fall out of love with him. I thought of Oliver, and how little Gabrielle Delacour had fallen in love with him the night Death Eaters attacked Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons because he'd held her hand and told her I'd take care of everything. I thought of Alycone, and how she was, glacially, coming out of the shell she'd built about herself, and how much she's smiled during the Lions/'Puffs match, even though her brother had got the Snitch first. I thought of Hermione, with her books and her lectures and her – nearly – unconditional love. I thought of Ron, who never realize he loved Hermione as much as she loved him without an anvil dropped on his head at some point, and how he was loyal and brave and true.

I thought of Claudia, and how she'd never know me, just like I never knew Mum, and how they'd say to her, "You look just like your mum. Except for the nose, of course. That you got from your dad."

I thought that all these years I'd been learning how to live, but now I realized I'd really been learning how to die. Because my death, in the place of Dumbledore, whom the world needed, was something I could live with… I was glad I would die in his stead. I just wished I could have said goodbye to Severus and Claudia…

But the spell never hit.

Dumbledore had used the last of his energy to throw himself in front of me. For a split second, he hung in the air, before his momentum carried him over the ramparts to land on the unforgiving ground so many stories below.

"YOU BASTARD!" I screamed as Draco fell, unconscious, beneath the weight of my spell. I knew he didn't hear me, but I didn't care. "YOU BASTARD! YOU COULD HAVE TRIED TO KILL ME AT ANY TIME! BUT NO! YOU HAVE TO TAKE DUMBLEDORE TOO! AND – AS IF THAT WASN'T ENOUGH, YOU HAVE TO TRY AND TAKE CLAUDIA TOO – TRYING TO TAKE HER BEFORE SHE WAS EVEN BORN! YOU VILE, DISPICABLE-" my mind was shouting all sorts of lies in my head, how about this was only a dream, how Dumbledore wasn't really dead, only playing; how, if I killed Draco, Dumbledore would come back to life.

I was about to cast a crucio on Draco when four strangers burst through the door – Amycus and Alecto Carrow, Fenrir Greyback, and Thorfinn Rowle, all of whom I only recognized from various conviction pictures – and there was no time to think about vengeance. I threw up a praesidis before they even had time to think and, before I even started to think properly, I started flinging iaceos and incarceruses like party favours.

Greyback, I only dimly noted, was the one to go over the wall.

I rushed down the stairs, going after the Carrows, leaving the stunned Draco and the bound Rowle behind me, jumping down missing stairs and running at breakneck speed to make sure no one else was hurt, that the body Draco had stepped over wasn't Severus's, that Dumbledore wasn't dead even though he'd been hit by a curse that had killed everyone it hit but me and fallen twenty stories…

…I easily saw half the DA and nearly all the Order as I ran, skidding around corners, casting spells I don't remember at people I don't recall, as the Carrows shouted to their fellows, "Time to leave!" and made their way to the ground floor. I cased after as best I could, taking this and that shortcut to head them off until I bowled into a group of pyjama-clad Hufflepuffs in the entrance hall.

"Harry! We heard a noise," Ernie was telling me, "and someone said something about the Dark Mark-"

"Death Eaters in the school," I panted. "Have any passed?"

"What? No!"

"Take everyone below Fifth Year back to your common room. Leave some of the DA to guard them."

Oliver had reached me by then in the tangle, wearing the flannel robe I'd bought him last summer when I discovered he'd outgrown his old one and his mum was in no shape to take him clothes shopping. "Ely-"

I still had the map on my somewhere. I must have looked mad, patting my pockets (and giving a grimace as my body reminded me, quite naturally, that there was a baby out there in need of feeding) and finding that, miraculously, the map was still on me and apparently undamaged. "Oliver," I said, turning one eye on him while the other remained fixed on the grand staircase – which, if what Ernie had said was true, and no one had passed here, was where Death Eaters were bound to come, unless they were able to find the Room of Requirement again, which I sincerely hoped they couldn't, – "Take this and go to the other common rooms. Get the younger ones barricaded in, safe. Gryffindor's closest. Stay off the main stairs; take the passage behind the dancing trolls instead."

And then I heard it – the sound of easily a dozen different footsteps as they thundered down the stairs, causing mayhem in their wake – and yelled at the Hufflepuffs, "Run! Now!" Shortly the entrance hall was empty of all but me and the handful of DA members – Justin, Hannah, even Susan – I'd told not to leave the shadows on pain of, almost certainly, death.

The Carrows were first, and as soon as they were in spelling distance I started casting, hoping to all that was holy that my shield would hold against whatever they chose to throw at me. And it wasn't just simple stunners and rope spells I was throwing about either. Cutting curses, deprimos, dirumpis – anything that could slow the monsters down – and, for those few whose aim was true enough to send Unforgivables in the direction of my hidden helpers, or back at those who'd chased after them – in any direction other then myself – I sent Unforgivables back.

Until, at last, everyone was bound or stunned or bleeding or dead on the entrance hall of the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, or else had managed to make it past me and fled onto the grounds.

I followed after them, but didn't make chase. I walked slowly to the base of the astronomy tower, over which still hung the Dark Mark, and found the two crumpled forms there. Greybeck's I kicked for good measure. But Dumbledore… he was truly dead. Because of me. He'd died, to save me.

I felt he blue light that had surrounded me the entire time vanish, and stumbled to the ground. The tears came, and I couldn't stop them.

That was where they found me.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

They put me in the bed next to Bill, and I lay there in shock, not saying anything after demanding they bring Claudia to me, which they did. Winky and Dobby, it later turned out, had moved her from the nursery into a small room of the kitchen when the Death Eaters came knocking, and I couldn't find words to thank them, however much I wanted to. I held Claudia, protected thanks to them, to me, long after she finished nursing.

Everyone seemed to be in shock. Bill was bit by – and unchanged – Greybeck before I got to him. He'd make it though. Fleur was devastated by his injury, and wouldn't leave his side, and Mrs. Weasley had been forced to admit that, maybe, Fleur was just good enough for her son. Ari locked herself in Madam Pomprey's office upon finding out about the headmaster's… death… and it'd took them three hours to open the door, wherein they found her in a state of catatonia not dissimilar to when she'd found out Ephraim died. Sirius had taken her back to HQ at my urging, and even he was too worn to think I might be plotting anything in even that.

Remus, much to everyone's surprise, including his own, proposed to Tonks right there in the infirmary.

The funeral was torture, and only because Severus, sporting some very nasty half-healed bruises, was there beside me did I manage to get through it at all. He'd not said a word about how, in the intervening days, I'd not let him out of my sight, nor set down Claudia for longer then it took to change a nappy.

I had one Horcrux in my possession, to destroy just as soon as I knew how, and one fake one – one that had, possibly, helped to kill Dumbledore – with a cryptic note inside. I'd Severus and Claudia and Sirius and Remus and Tonks and Hermione and the Cauldwells and the Weasleys. But still, sitting there as everyone else began to disperse from the white tomb, I couldn't stop myself from whispering to my husband, "What on earth are we going to do now?"

But he didn't know. No one did. We just had to go on.

…Greensleeves, now farewell, adieu, to God I pray to prosper thee, for I am still thy lover true.

Come once again and love me.


	26. In Which I Have Good, Old-Fashioned Family Vengeance-Seeking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The mistake began when God was created in a male image. Of course, women would see Him that way, but men should have been gentlemen enough, remembering their mothers, to make god a woman! But the God of Gods – the Boss – has always been a man. That makes life so perverted and death so unnatural. We should have imagined life as created in the birth-pain of God the Mother. Then we would understand why we, Her children, have inherited pain, for we would know that our life's rhythm beats from Her great heart, torn with the agony of love and birth. And we would feel that death meant reunion with Her, a resigning back into Her substance, blood of Her blood again, peace of Her peace!"
> 
> \- - Nina Leeds in Strange Interlude by Eugene O'Neill - -
> 
> Part Four: Seventh Year

On the eve of my seventeenth birthday, three weeks after Remus and Tonks left for the Muggle market to pick up what I needed for dinner and returned without the rosemary I wanted and with a pair of – platinum – rings upon their fingers, I was in the kitchen again. The three kitchen fires were lit, awaiting word from whoever needed to send it. I was the only one at HQ – well, Claudia was asleep in a crib in the far corner by the Russian stove, while Alycone was upstairs in the library with her Sino-Japanese comics and her brother in his room, trying to figure out how to best answer the latest letter Gabrielle Delacour had sent him – and watching the fires mercilessly for any hint of news, while Persephone and Ralph prattled on the WNN's late show.   
"…some interesting rumours from the isle."   
"I don't know if you can call them rumours. Mr. Cuthbert Mockridge of Suffolk, Deputy Head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures and notoriously 'soft' on part-human creatures, has been missing for three days now."   
"Still, Persephone, rumour has it that the body found in the Thames just outside of Southend-on-Sea was that of Mrs. Malfalda Rendell Hopkirk of Islington – wife of Taggard Hopkirk, the bestselling murder mystery books The Death of-"   
"Yes, Ralph, we know of your passion for mystery novels. Do get on with it. People won't wait forever for the news."   
"Anyone who really wanted the news would have listened to it at six. Or ten… Anyhow, as anyone who listened to the news at six or ten would know, a body matching the description of Mrs. Hopkirk, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement since the murder of Amelia Bones a year ago, was found west of Southend-on-Sea early this afternoon by Muggle authorities and, shortly thereafter, taken into the custody of the British Ministry of Magic."   
"No official word has been given as to the identity of the deceased has been released, though WNN's sources tell us that the decedent was between sixty and ninety years of age, of Indo-European descent, and did not die of drowning, though her body was dredged from the Thames."   
"Mrs. Hopkirk, eighty-three, has been missing since Tuesday last. Shortly before her disappearance she proposed to enact Article Five, Section vee-eye-eye of the Reasonable Restriction of…"   
I took a ball of pastry dough out of the refrigeration cabinet and began to roll it on the flour-dusted table, where I could watch both the fires and Paracelsus, who in turn lay curled before the surprisingly modern hi-fi, his heads upon his tail, humming along with the radio show's background music.   
Hestia Jones, a thirty-something member of the Order whose matronly appearance was entirely at odds with her severe, business-like demeanour, had a deputy position in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. She'd called in just after the ten o'clock news to say that the body near Southend-on-Sea was Malfalda Hopkirk's, and they were delaying releasing the news until they could do something so that someone, anyone other then her Deputy, Pius Thicknesse, became Head of that department after her.   
Kingsley, Tonks, Sirius, Remus, Bill, and a handful of the other, more offensive-spell inclined of the Order were camped out near likely spots of Death Eater destruction, in case Voldemort decided to start my birthday celebrations early. Severus was too, on Knoctern with a flask of Polyjuice, trying to discern the truth in the rumours running there.   
I placed the rolled-out dough on a plate and picked up a knife, setting myself to coring and cutting apples once more. Then frowned. I only had a single apple left, not enough for a pie. Blueberry it would be then.   
As I was de-stemming the fruit and throwing it, dejected, into the colander, Acel nudged the volume back up on the radio.   
"…morrow, which has some number of British Wizards worried. The disappearances of the Deputy Head of the DRCMC and the Head of the DMLE are only the most… significant of those that have spiralled since the death of the beloved Albus Percieval Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Supreme Mugwump of the ICW, Chief Warlock of the English Wizengamot, Grand Sorcerer, and member of the Order of Merlin, first class, barely a month ago. How many of these disappearances can be blamed about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named cannot be made certain."   
"What is certain, though, is as time passes-"   
"-or comes closer to the birthday of the Girl-Who-Lived, Countess Dover, who has been named in certain papers the 'Chosen One' who can defeat You-Know-Who-"   
"-the disappearances, murders, and attempted murders are only becoming the more frequent. "Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Snape, la Baronne de Calais in her own right and Countess Dover through marriage-" My heart rose to my throat at the mention of my name, as if it might bring some dreadful catastrophe upon me with its weight.   
"-who – sorry, Persephone."   
"-as I was saying, Éléonore Snape neé Potter is to turn seventeen in, oh, twenty-three minutes, but already the hopes of all of England, it seems, are upon her. I'm not an Englishman like yourself, Ralph, so it's not my place to say…"   
"Nor are you a man at all, Persephone, but a Hellene witch is still a fine woman, in my book." I snorted and slid the stems from cutting board into the trash, which promptly composted them. I personally thought that Ralph was the sort who thought all women "fine." My heart slid back into its proper place.   
"Well," Persephone said slowly over the radio, "I've been looking at the charter for the British ministry, and some things have been made perfectly clear. If their Minster leaves office without designating a proxy to sit until the next election, the Head of the DMLE becomes interim Minster, then the Deputy Head of that Department, and then the other Heads and Deputies in some annoyingly complicated pattern. But Mrs. Hopkirk is missing, presumed dead. Minster Scrimgerour has no proxy. It is unknown whether Mrs. Hopkirk has or not. Which would make Mr. Thicknesse British Minister of Magic, should something happen to Minister Scrimgerour…"   
Then, with the comfort only a man currently sitting in the WNN Radio headquarters in Düsseldorf, six happy hours away, could have in these days, "I've no problems with wizards who care for history and seek to keep it from disappearing. I've no problem with those who'd rather associate with others of our kind, not understanding the strange place the Muggle world has become since they ousted the Bourbons and Habsburgs and took to their machines and electricity. I've no problem with those who feel that – within reason – part-humans and others, who could cause great trouble if discovered by Muggles, should be restricted in certain movements.   
"But," Ralph said, growing fervent, "What I do have a problem with are those who would hold history higher than the present times and seek to return to what is long past. And I have problem with those who would, rather then live separate from the Muggles – in seclusion, yes, put in peace too, for we may have magic, yes, and have been more powerful than they for many, many centuries, but the Muggles have taken that power into their own hands, and what He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and others like him fail to realize is that all the magic in the world cannot stop bullets, or bombs. The Wizarding world does not have tanks, I say to them, or ships. We do not have armies or aeroplanes, only our wands. And wands can burn…   
"And as for those that would feel that careful precaution is useless, I must say: you are fools. They feel that, rather then protect our part-human – the centaurs, the merpeople, – and humanoid brethren – goblins, giants, hags – should sooner be destroyed rather then protected from those that would harm them. And as for those unfortunates infected beyond their means – werewolves, vampires, – why, they wish to do away with them all together when but one night a month are the former dangerous and the later, through the miracle of modern medicine, can survive off of willingly donated blood without need killing any. By joining up with this latest Dark Lord, these non-human brethren of ours do only themselves a disservice, making the jobs of those of us, sound-minded and tolerant of differences, to convince others of their true nature all the harder. And we do not, my friends, live in easy days."   
"It seems to me, Ralph, that with the death of Headmaster Dumbledore – a hero, if you will, of the last war – the British Wizarding world has abdicated responsibility for He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and his followers until a new hero can step up. I do not know if it is because so much is going on, and the Auror office there can no longer keep order within their borders, or if some one will not let them keep it, only that, were Mr. Thicknesse to become Minister of Great Britain, things will become decidedly worse there and wherever else the Darkness chooses to spread its fingers."   
"You're saying that The Countess Dover is the hero the Brits need to restore law before the Muggles take notice of us?"   
"Maybe, Ralph. Maybe. Anyone who can, before their seventeenth birthday, be responsible for the death of seventeen and the detention of twenty-one Death Eaters – including the one responsible for the murder of Headmaster Dumbledore, seventeen-year-old Draco Cygnus Malfoy – whilst protecting her fellow students at Hogwarts School is not your average schoolgirl."   
"I'd say the fact that she married former Death Eater, Severus Eteocles Snape, who also happens to be one of her professors, would prove that, and, if any additional proof were needed, I'd point to the fact that she took her Defence NEWT last June despite only being a Sixth Year and having young…"   
"Lady Claudia-Éléonore Séléné Snape?" the woman offered helpfully.   
"Yes, Lady Claudia – for some reason, I must admit, I keep wanting to call her Lady Claire…"   
Paracelsus turned down the radio again as it turned to nonsense about the rumour I had decided against Buddhist monks raising my daughter and been looking into instead having mute Tibetan nuns or blind Siamese clerics take her off my hands.   
"Mute Tibetan nuns indeed," and I poured the washed and sweetened berries into the pie pan, ignoring the people on the radio calling me to be a hero – to do anything other then stand here in this kitchen, baking pies of every flavour through the night while my friends and family waited on darkened street corners or smoke-filled bars for an action that may never come. For all we knew, Riddle wouldn't try a mass Muggle murder spree like he'd given me for a wedding present, and, like Persephone Sampinos had said on the radio, would go after the Ministry instead; maybe Riddle wouldn't do anything for my seventeenth birthday, just because we thought he would. But, then again, he'd hid his Horcruces across one isle (or so I thought) and made them out of similar things – and save them. But could I? Yes, I had killed seventeen Death Eaters that night. Yes, I had helped to capture the remaining, who were now held in detention facilities in the MoM because Azkaban was no longer certain. I had "contained" Dumbledore's murderer. I'd been nominated for another Order of Merlin – first class, this time – for my actions in the entrance hall. (I could remember it even now, the 'Puff's telling the others as I walked past, how I had told them what was happening and gotten them to safety, how one of the Death Eaters only a year out of Hogwarts had tried to crucio poor Susan Bones and though I'd been trading curses with two others across the hall I sent a Killing Curse her assailant's way before the first syllable was out of his mouth). And yet I was in my adoptive father's kitchen making pies, waiting for news because I couldn't sleep, because I lived through that night over and over in my dreams, and was afraid to sleep. And they weren't only dreams of what really happened that night. They were dreams of him. Harry. Who he was and what he might be doing in my dreams, I don't know, only that he might have been me or something like and that world was all messed up and wrong and Severus was evil and Claudia didn't even exist and it was almost worse to watch his dreams then to see the battle replayed over and over again until I could have sworn blood that head never hit me was staining my hands and drying on every plane of me, sinking into my skin so that their unspeakable evil was added into mine until I was Darker and more cruel then Voldemort ever was…   
He who fights monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster. And when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you.   
I couldn't hold it in any more, and broke down, crying shamelessly as I sank to the floor where I stood, knocking the table that held half-finished pie as I did so, causing berries to spill. I crushed a few, and their acerbic smell did little to bring me to my senses.   
Either I loose, I thought, and everyone I love dies. Or…   
Or I win, and loose myself in the winning. And, because nothing could stop me, because, as much as I wanted to live, I had to protect them, and would gladly give up life and land for them, even if that meant becoming something they'd have to destroy later…   
I laughed at this thought, still crying, and this turned into a fit of hiccups that more annoyed me then anything else.   
"Are you?"   
"Alright?"   
"Mère?"   
I paused long enough in my hysteria to look upwards from where I lay on the floor. All three of Paracelsus's heads were poking over the edge of the table, looking at me with various levels of concern and/or interest. "It's just stressss." I told them. "And hormonesss. And sleep-deprivation."   
Tersely, Sus lectured, "Mère, how do you expect to take care of usss and Claudia if you do not sleep? Sleep is essential to scale-lessss onesss: you become very stupid without it. Sleep now."   
"Someone has to watch the firesss," I coughed, feeling sick to my stomach from it all. Even the smell of my many, many pies was too much for me right then, and only trough great skilful skill did I force myself not to be sick.   
"I will watch the firesss," said Par practically.   
"Only," Sus said with a serpentine sneer, "Mère can understand us-"   
Calmly, Acel interrupted as if commenting on weather, "And the evil Speaker."   
"And the evil Speaker. So, unlessss Mr. Evil decidesss to pop over for tea, I don't think that's a good idea."   
"You don't think anything'sss ever a good idea, Sussss."   
"Maybe Susss should get laid." Par, Sus, and myself all turned to look at the middle head of the Runespoor curiously. I think my face, between hiccups that were quickly dissolving into coughs and sputters as sharp, vile-tasting bile threatened to rise in my throat, was a most peculiar shade of cran-apple. "What? That'sss what Mère always saysss about Gran-père. What doesss 'get laid' mean, anyway? Isss it like sunbathing?"   
"I like sunbathing-"   
"But, what Par isssn't saying, brother, isss that you're an idiot."   
The three began to fight amongst themselves, shouting and biting at each other until they woke Claudia, who had lately taken to sleeping through the night. "Now look at what you've done, Paracelsusss: you've woken your sister," I hissed at them, going to my baby in her crib by the stove. "Oh, Claudia, what is it? Huh, baby girl? What's wrong? Mummy's here," I told her, cradling her on my hip and swaying slowly back and forth. "Did your mean brothersss wake you? I think they did."   
Claudia gurgled at me, calming down quickly now that she knew the source of the noise. I brushed a lock of thick black hair back from her face and smiled. She smiled back at me, which somehow made everything better. The middle fire roared to life then, and a voice came wafting through, asking, "Operator?"   
Trying not to sound as sick as I felt, "What's your emergency?"   
"Ely? It's Hestia. Arthur and I managed to file the proxy paperwork for Hopkirk. Back up; we're coming through."   
The emerald flames roared higher and only a quick step back prevented me from being bowled over as the matronly-looking woman stepped through, pink-cheeked and cheery-looking despite the severe cut of her dark hair and the steely glint in her eyes. Hestia gave me a curt nod as she dusted herself off, saw my legion of pies on the countertops, and proceeded to rustle up a plate and silverware from the deep and sometimes malevolent drawers. Mr. Weasley, still thin and all elbows-and-knees after nearly five decades, followed shortly thereafter, and the fire calmed itself.   
"Éléonore m'girl. And little Claudia," (he paused here to kiss his pseudo-granddaughter on the crown of her head). "Good to see you both. What a night. Is that pie?"   
I nodded, slightly abashed, "Peach, apple, blueberry… I think there might even be some ice cream left…" Quickly, I turned the radio down so that the music – Muggle, from the sounds of it – was all but off and grabbed my Runespoor by the tail, stuffing him, to Claudia's amusement, in the pocket of my robes with his string and his interesting stones. "So," trying to ignore the wiggling of snake warfare going on in my pocket, "you said you got the paperwork filed?"   
"Oh, yes," Mr. Weasley said, helping himself to a slice of apple pie, "getting it backdated was the hard part, but we were able to get it filed it with the papers from June, so it should hold up."   
"Who'd you put down as proxy?"   
Nervously, stealing a glance at Hestia, "Well, you see, we've reason to believe that You-Know-Who is going to try to take out Scrimgour." I nodded, waiting for him to get to the point. "He also refuses to name a proxy – calls it 'a defeatist attitude' – so, effectively, whoever holds Hopkirk's proxy will be Minister until elections can be held-"   
"Which could be ages," I supplied, shifting Claudia to my other hip, "what with everything going on as it is. But anyone's better then that bastard Thicknesse. So, who? Kingsley?"   
"Er, no."   
"Oh, please don't tell me you put down Moody-"   
"For God's sake, Arthur! Just tell the girl."   
"Tell me what?"   
"Well… anyone who knew Hopkirk would know how she felt about aurors and hitwizards in charge of anything – she always said that they attacked first, thought second… and we also had to choose someone who could keep the country together, at least at face value… be something of a rallying point, you know, for the legitimate government…"   
"Yes, yes, because any case where her proxy actually becomes interim Minister would, necessarily, be a government-in-exile…"   
"Which is why we… er… put your name down as proxy."   
I about dropped Claudia.   
"Congrats," Hestia offered, sliding a slice of pie my way. "You're the Interim Head of the DMLE."

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (  
I don't think I went to bed until the sun rose. Not much hereafter I was cruelly woken, pulled from dazed half-slumber in Severus's arms.   
"Happy Birthday!" nearly everyone I knew shouted.   
"No it's not," I mumbled, and turned, trying to burry my face in Severus's laughing – and curious dressed – form. In any other instance, I think he might have woken at the intrusion, and maybe he had, but right now I think he was too exhausted to care: though I might have taken up the logistical slack of Dumbledore's death, he still felt the need to try to gather as much information as possible, as if, if he'd been a better spy, none of this would have happened, and he was trying to keep something else from coming to pass that was not wanted.   
A few of those annoying birthday whistles – the kind that curl outward when you blow into them and, in this case, sparkled, burst with confetti, and gave forth smelly puffs of smoke too – sounded in the air. "Come on, Ely," said another voice. You've got presents downstairs in need of opening."   
"Go 'way," I told them, and pulled the blanket tighter.   
Someone, probably Acel, turned on Paracelsus's radio, which was sitting on my beside and blasted thirty volume Muggle music into my ear, singing along as soon as he caught the tune, "…a bit too insane, icing over a secret pain. You know you don't belong. You're the first to fight. You're way too loud. You're the flash of light on a burial shroud. I know something'sss wrong…"   
"I'm going to hex somebody," I said, though I doubt if anyone could have heard me over the racket the radio was making, "if you don't let me sleep."   
"…Well everyone I know has got a reason to stay; put the past away. I wish you would step back from that ledge my friend; you could cut tiesss with all the liesss that you've been living in…" Blearily, I clutched the blankets to me and fumbled for the radio knob. After a moment, I found it and slammed it off. Acel carried on for a moment, "…and if you do not want to see me again, I would understand…" then turned and examined the speakers as if they'd betrayed him. "That wasss cold, Mére," the middle head of my Runespoor insisted, then curled upon himself and sulked.   
Defeated, I summoned my robe towards me and shrugged it on, glaring at the beaming faces crowding the room and most of the hall beyond. "You couldn't have waited until, I dunno, teatime to assault me with balloons and streamers."   
"Nope," said Tonks, who was closest and wearing lurid orange hair and a yellow shirt that had the words Auror Line Do Not Cross zooming around it, and clasped me in a birthday hug the moment my feet were touching ground. Her shirt turned bright red where I touched it and let loose loud police sirens that slowly quieted as the red stains faded through orange and back to yellow. "Wotcher, Éléonore."   
"Where do you get these shirts?" I asked, trying for the dresser, but being headed off by Sirius, Remus, Mrs. Weasley, and Fleur, the last of whom handed me a medium brown bag and shoved me towards the bathroom.   
"A cousin on my dad's side makes them. Third cousin twice removed by marriage, but still," Tonks called through the door as I threw on the short, strapless dress and the shoes with too high a heel for first thing after a long, stressful night. "Old bird lives in Consett. Gotta be ninety if a day. Buys Muggle clothes, charms them, and goes to parties on the continent over the summer. Absolutely insane. You'd like her, I think."   
I was trying to charm my hair to do something to make me look presentable, rather then a fancily dressed putain, but paused at this. Would I like the "old bird" because she made bizarre shirts, or because she was insane? Should I be insulted? I shook it off and blinked my leaden lids. Smile, I told myself. Be happy. They worked hard for this; it wasn't their fault that I'd not gotten but what, three, four hours of sleep? I'd no idea what time it was, only that it was too early, whatever time it was. I needed a watch. Normally I'd have been up by now, to feed Claudia. I hadn't heard her when Acel turned on "Jumper," so I assumed Mrs. Weasley or one of the others had moved her into Alycone's room or Oliver's. I tried to tell myself it was okay, that she was among friends and family here, and she was safe. But there was a nagging worry in the back of my head (which, I was certain, was already experiencing the beginnings of an aneurysm) when I couldn't see her, made all the worse because I'd tried to nurse her before bed and couldn't, and was rather worried that wouldn't be able to today, and that I was a failure of some sort as a mother for failing her this way, when she was only three months old.   
Out of habit, I ducked down and peeked into the box under the sink that held various feminine hygiene products. The box inside, plain wooden thing, was untouched as always. But still I checked for, inside, lay the broken Horcrux of the Gaunt ring, the fake locket, and the half of whatever remained of Riddle's soul inside Ravenclaw's diadem. I sighed with relief and plastered a smile on my face, heading out to face the party.   
No sooner had I opened the door then was I set upon by hands and pulled downstairs, where singing streamers ("…out, dig me in outta this mess, baby out of my head…" went the red, the yellow, "…be paranoid, but not an android. When I am king, you will be first against the wall with your opinion which is of no consequence at all. What's this? I may be…" while the blue, "…feel the snake bite enter…" whenever someone brushed against them, and so largely people tried not to) and balloons that would, at random intervals, spew forth confetti upon the unvigilant, held sway. It was overwhelming, the all the people, who were happy for the first time since Dumbledore died it seemed, and sound and bright, shiny paper filled with presents I still couldn't quite justify myself as deserving. And the cake, so large, and almost too sweet to eat… and all the presents. I couldn't even begin to name them all, or who they were from. Ministers, in the British and French MoMs; friends from Hogwarts; my family; random Light and Grey families I knew only in passing; boards of directors from at least five companies I, apparently, held strong stock in; the knife maker who I'd purchased Severus's Christmas present from; the jeweller who'd made my presents from Severus; The DPNN, WNN, the Mexican Red de la Noticias de los Magos, both major Sino-Japanese news conglomerates, and a Farsi-language paper; and, of course, from the Order. I felt overwhelmed, and told them so.   
"Nonsense, Ely," Mrs. Weasley insisted, "You only turn seventeen once," which, I supposed, in her mind, justified this all.   
The party went on late until the morning (which was to say, elevenish, when those who'd been up all night, like Hestia and Mr. Weasley, and those who'd gotten little sleep, like me and Severus, were dozing off, and those who'd gotten enough sleep were wanting lunch) before I could get Severus alone and ask him why everyone's doing this for me.   
"There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents and only one for birthday presents, you know."   
I groaned. "Lewis Carroll? Honestly, Severus, of all the Muggle children's authors you could have chosen to read, you read Carroll? I'm a fan of nonsense just as much as any witch, but you can't tell me more then three sentences in Through the Looking Glass made any sense at all."   
"Nor did I," he explained. "Still, people have had precious little to celebrate lately, what with the werewolf and the metamorph-"   
"Remus and Tonks," I corrected.   
"-eloping like they did, your birthday is the first thing they've had. And, if not a life with a little bit of dancing, a little bit of music and laughing, and the ability to make complete fools of ourselves if we so choose, what then are we fighting for?"   
"As for you, Gilgamesh," I told him, leaning against his shoulder and trying not to yawn, "fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man."   
"Tell me you're not reading The Epic of Gilgamesh to Claudia while I'm away," he laughed. It was good to hear him laugh. It reverberated in his chest and tickled my ear.   
"No. Only stories where, against all odds, the hero lives through defeating the bad guy, marries, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Lord of the Rings, Sabriel, the Ender's Game quartet… the usual. I figure we should wait until she's old enough to understand the real world never ends that well before starting her in on the tragedies." He laughed at that too, and so did I. It was sleep deprivation, probably, and the downward spiral of the sugar high my birthday cake had given me. Evil cake. Very, very good, but I was beginning to feel sick from all the sugar.   
"Alice Liddell was twenty years younger then Carroll," he said conversationally a few moments later, when were on the couch, leaning against each other to stay upright.   
"Is that so?" I asked sleepily, already drifting off.   
"We have to leave soon," he shook me awake, "and yes."   
It took me a minute to remember the reason behind this leaving, and I soured to it. "Is it too late to say I've changed the mind?"   
"No. You'd have inconvenienced a few, but whatever you say, they'll do. You're their leader now."   
I made a face he couldn't see but knew I'd make. "Just because Hestia and Mr. Weasley fooled the paperwork into thinking Hopkirk named me her proxy doesn't mean I'm anyone's leader."   
"You know what I mean. The Order knows Dumbledore shared something with you – the Horcruces – that is crucial to ending this war. You may only be seventeen, Éléonore, but they look to you for guidance. Because you do not go out on missions, you've been able to collate the information we gather and research more then any one else. And, because of this, you can tell us how best to do the missions… in short, you've made it your duty, so you might as well call yourself by the proper title while doing it."   
I glared half-heartedly at him and went upstairs to gather Claudia from Winky. We'd a trip to hell to go on.  
Said trip to hell had been, of course, my own fault. I had said to Severus the week after Dumbledore's funeral, when we'd moved into HQ – because, a) Hogwarts itself seemed to be in mourning, which meant that it would not have been a happy place to be even if we didn't have memories from that night haunting us; b) The Order needed us nearby because, as Severus had mentioned, I had managed to collect more then a few of the finer points of Dumbledore's plan using everything from snooping to overt questioning to knowledge that Voldemort had Horcruces and would, likely, be trying to overcome death at any given turn; and, c) the very real worry that Sirius would start up cooking again and kill half the Order with a roast one night, which might land him in the Guinness Book of World Records but would do nothing to destroy evil, - blood magic was a very helpful thing for not getting killed, and if any part of my continued existence could be attributed to said magic, then that made about three weeks of my life at Azkaban South worth it. I had also found some interesting books on blood magic in the Restricted Section looking for ways to destroy Horcruces, some very interesting books on wards while searching for ways to find and get Horcruces, and a curious book with one, constantly updating, page about curse-breaking that came together in such a way as to suggest a means to transferring blood wards from one individual to another and mentioned this fact. It was also made perfectly clear that I'd do anything for my little daughter, who was three months old today and, if you listened closely enough, said things that might, just might, be the beginnings of "muma" and "papa."

In short, we were going to that region of Kokytos, the Ninth Circle of Hell, known as Caïna, where traitors to blood kin are said to dwell. Looking on a map, it can be found in Surrey, about an hour on the A3 out of London, in the town of Little Whinging. Of course, our journey, conducted the Muggle way to avoid attention from Death Eaters or the MoM in Sirius's latest purchase – a Rolls-Royce Corniche – took closer to three hours, and was quite Moody-esque, in that we took the M20 then M26 to Speldhurst, where we dropped Hermione off at her parents' house and changed the colour of the convertible with a press of the cigarette lighter from "Duck Egg Blue" to "Taffeta White." From there, with Sirius, Remus, and Tonks in the expanded front row of seats and Fleur, Severus, myself, and Claudia in the back, we took the A264 to Petworth, having changed the car to "Admiral Blue" near Horsham for some reason I'd still yet to discern. It was a straight shot north Number Four Privet Drive from there, in its suburb outside of Little Whining, where we could pull the now "Semaphore Yellow" Corniche in front of the house whose manicured flower beds and whose very-much-less-expensive SUV I'd tended to many a time.   
My hand ached on my dear holy wand, trying to restrain myself from wishing goosegrass on their lawn and blight on the roses. I think the only thing that kept me from doing just that was the fact that, as we piled out of the Corniche, I was forced to pocket my wand so I could both slide from the middle of the expanded back seat to the door and hold on to Claudia, who seemed to be sensing how much I didn't want to be here and had begun to wiggle in my arms.   
"Cloudy," said Sirius, plucking the girl from my arms as tried to hold her still with one hand and fix the skirt of my dress with the other. I'm not sure how he came upon the nickname "Cloudy" only he and some of the Order had picked up on it, "I know this is an evil place, which is why we're going to see your great-aunt and -uncle get the punishment they deserve. What do you think, Cloudy, boils or-"   
Severus gave one of his looks to Sirius and, in a professorial way that so many years of having been lectured by professors for this that or the other had been instilled in my adoptive father as something to avoid, "Kindly do not speak of torture in front of my daughter."   
This caused Sirius to make a face that Claudia found extremely funny, and cooed at, her steel grey eyes glittering with mirth. It was the face Sirius routinely made when he remembered that the precious child he held in his arms, with a thick tuft of black hair atop her head and a face that must have reminded him so much of the last baby he'd held – me, – was not just my child, his granddaughter, but Severus's child too. He only tolerated Severus for my sake, and even that tolerance didn't extend to not glaring at Severus in his rear-view mirror whenever he caught his reflection there. Azkaban had done funny things to my father, I decided. One of them was fact that he sometimes had trouble remembering (or so I thought) that I was myself and not a black-haired version of Mum and Claudia was herself and not a baby me. He usually only had trouble with that after he'd spent a long time with Remus or imbibed a bit to much, both of which he'd done today, and had little sleep as well. Another was that he'd named the Corniche. Its name was Fulvia. The Ecosse was Sandrino, his motorbike Ariah. Sometimes he spoke of them like they were people with distinct personalities which, again, mostly happened when he'd forgotten where and when he was. Usually, if he thought such thoughts at all, he remembered to keep them to himself. I indulged him as best I could, but sometimes I worried about him, and other times I was so annoyed with him I could do nothing but scream in frustration. Severus, better then I, did no worse then dark glares.   
Fleur un-knotted the scarf she'd tied around her head and let her platinum blonde hair fall free, casting a contemptuous look upon the brick-façaded, picture-perfect, and slightly-grey street. Mimicking her expression perfectly and looking utterly ridiculous doing so with the turquoise bob she now wore, Tonks did the same, causing Remus – her new husband, it was hard to remember – to have to fight to control his laughter as Fleur spun around and narrowed her eyes at the metamorphmagus. "So," she said instead after a moment, "'ow do we want to do this?"   
I frowned at the house, "I think I'll go in first, with Claudia. See if I can get Petunia to cooperate. If not, the rest of you can follow as necessary," my frown deepened. "Better be ready, I doubt she'll even let me in the door."   
Tonks pouted for a moment, "I don't like this plan. I want a better one." She then affected a twinkle in her suddenly baby blue eyes as her put, too quickly, turned into a smile. "I've a better idea: we go in there, wands blazing, get what we came for, and leave before police show up."   
"Why would the police show up, Tonks?" Remus asked curiously.   
"I doubt I know even 'alf of the things these Muggles 'ave done to Alexandrie-Margaux, Monsieur Lupin, and I am certain, if not 'eld in check, la police will most certainly be interested in finding out what 'as 'appened to the inhabitants of this… house."   
"Oh, yes, I agree," he said causally now. "It's just I thought that Jr. Auror was something equivalent to Chief Inspector or something like, and that you could shoo all responding offices away."   
"I suppose, but then I'd have to fill out a lot of paperwork, and then I'd never get to come on fun outings like this again."   
I blinked at Tonks, decided I should be grateful she'd changed that awful shirt some "old bird" up in Consett had made for her into something out another one of those medium brown bags, then turned resolutely back to this demonic house. The day was unusually chill, which probably meant that either Dementors were breeding in Woking and one or another of my guard, as it were, would shortly be called away to deal with that, or that Dante had gotten the word to Lucifer how his inferno was supposed to be arranged and said demon was making the necessary changes now. "No time like the present, I suppose," I tried to rally myself, took Claudia back from her grandfather, and settled her on my hip.   
I went to the door, and knocked, very aware of Tonks and Remus lounging against the side of "Fulvia" while Sirius insisted that Fulvia was not meant to be lounged against while the other members of my party looked on with vague amusement at the goings-on. For a moment, I try to remember where this all started, three or so years ago, on a hot October day in Potions, when I didn't yet know Fleur or Tonks, and Sirius was still on the run, and Severus… well, I don't know what you could have called Severus back then. It's a futile task, though, for I've long ago decided that it's best to just deal with the days as they come and worrying about the future or the past or whatnot is just a pointless endeavour bound to insight pain and suffering. Not that I take my own advice to mind, however, but that's my decision. I'll deal with tomorrow when it comes.   
At great length, the door opened, and, still looking over her shoulder at the TV, "I'm a good Anglican and am tired of you people pounding on my door during Gen-"   
"Hello, Petunia. May I come in?"   
Eyes wide, not taking in anything more then my presence, she extended her long neck out the door just enough to make sure none of her neighbours were watching and then hissed through clenched teeth, "I thought we were rid of you once and for all."   
"This is the last time I'll ever come to this… place, believe you me, unless you ask me to re-"   
"Then leave us alone. We don't want anything more to do with you or you freaks." She began to close the door on me, but Severus, who appeared as if he'd apparated from the road, placed his hand solidly on the door, and kept it from closing with scarcely any effort.   
"Mrs. Dursely, if you would?"   
She wouldn't, so I ducked under her arm and entered anyway. Dudders was visible through the door the kitchen, eyes bent on his TV while his mouth chewed endlessly, moving up down, up down over and over again in a repeated rhythm that made me sick to remember. Slipping into the all too tidy living room and turning the hospital-themed drama off with a wave of my wand, I did my best not to hex everyone in sight, beginning with Big-D and his constant, smack-smack-gulp-smack-ing from the other room. My hand tightened on my wand, but I restrained myself, trying not to wish food-induced death on my cousin. As my husband, aunt, and various other degrees of almost-relatives came at various levels of volition into the room, I heard Dudley choke and sputter; immediately, I slid my wand away and shifted Claudia onto my other hip.   
Turning to face Petunia, now seated on the couch opposite Sirius and Fleur and looking like she was waiting to be turned into a budgie, I steadied myself and tried to act like a Baroness of Calais and Countess of Dover ought to act. Briefly, I couldn't figure out what that out to be, so I settled for doing the best I could remember out of a conglomeration of half-remembered books. "You've met everyone here before, but I don't suppose you remember them." Well, that's a start at least, I figured, and waved my hand at Sirius. "Sirius Black, my adoptive father," said adoptive father gave a smile that was more akin to a dog baring teeth to an intruder (Severus, I noticed, pinched the bridge of his nose at this. "Fleur Delacour, who's to marry Bill tomorrow, so I suppose you should remember her as Fleur Weasley," she gave a curt nod of her head, and visibly looked to be holding her Fury side under her Siren. Tonks was leaning against the banister of the stairs opposite the door to the living room, just to the left of my cupboard, "Jr. Auror Tonks Lupin," Remus was standing in the doorway, looking slightly wolfish in his professorial way, "and her husband, Remus Lupin. And this," I inclined my head towards Severus, who was standing to the side of the electric fireplace, and tried to begin there, but Petunia seemed to have found her voice.   
"I'm not taking in another one of you freaks," she spat vilely. "I'm not running a bloody orphanage here. I was more then generous taking you in, though you never were anything but trouble, so just take your bastard and get out of… my… house…" She trailed off towards the end, faced by more wands then I could be certain of at the moment, several angry wand-wielders, and the threat of not one, but two different wizards trying to hold her up by the scruff of the neck.   
Sirius was closer, though, and beat him to it, grabbing the collar of her shirt for a moment and saying, very lowly very close to her face, his eyes filled with rage I'd rarely seen him exhibit to this degree and more madness then was probably prudent, "How can you say that to her? Do you know who your niece is, what she's done?" he released her contemptuously and turned around, striding to look out the mirror and dart eyes up and down the street, as if an army of demented and sticky-fingered kids was on the march to destroy Fulvia and her magical paint job.   
Severus, after taking a moment, contented himself to pointing a wand point-black her way.   
Shaking with anger myself, "I'd sooner consign myself to Hell then let you raise a child, let alone my own." My mind flooded with the first memory I had of this place, the first clear feeling I had. I was three and had been shouted at for playing with one of Dudley's toys, one of the one's he never would have touched if it wasn't for me showing an interest in it. He'd cried for his mum and, before I could say we could share or play together or whatever my three-year-old brain might have been thinking, Petunia had grabbed me awkwardly and stuffed me into the cupboard-under-the-stairs, locking the door. I was too little then to reach the string for the bare bulb, or to know what it was for, really, and so I sat there in the dark crying for my own mum. Petunia had come to the door and told me, in no uncertain terms, that my good-for-nothing mother was dead and, if I didn't want to end up a bitch-freak-whore like her, I'd be quiet and be thankful they'd taken a worthless–waste-of-space–freak like me in. No child should have to listen to that, go through what I did, or even-   
I stopped myself and tried to anger the fire burning within me. As calmly as I could, "The man with the wand at your jugular is Severus Snape, Earl of Dover-" she made a slight starting movement at that. "He's also my husband. Father of my daughter, Claudia. He has a bit of a temper, and really doesn't like people saying things about me."   
"I also have a vial of nex ranae reginae – an indiscriminate poison," he added for Petunia's benefit. "Sometimes it kills like le grec buveur, slowly blackening the liver, like a cancer, giving you painful months or even years to suffer through before you die. Other times it will be quick, as if a nuvem pó, which will fill your lungs with noxious smoke, smothering you with the very breath you draw to call for aid. Or any number of a thousand other poisons."   
With a tight smile, "You should be pleased, Petunia. It's a very expensive and very difficult poison to make."   
She looked aghast, her equine face turning into a mask of horror and rage. One hand, instinctively, rose to her throat; the other, oddly enough, went to smooth her hair. Still, her mouth began, slowly, to form the shape of a word I'd heard so often: Freak.   
But then, from the kitchen, Dudley called importunately, "Mum! Do we have any more pop?" and the whites of her eyes retreated with fear. I knew that fear, fear for one's child.   
"Check the fridge, Duddikins."   
There was silence for a moment as Dudley plodded to the fridge, opened it, and shifted foodstuffs to find what he wanted. "Oh. Found it," he said, his voice accentuated with a sharp pop! aaahh! of the can opening. Then, with a dull thud, it could be heard falling to the floor as he caught sight of Tonks and her turquoise hair. "Mum!" he shrieked. "Mum! Burglars've gotten into the house!"   
Wanly, Tonks smiled and waved one of the wands she was holding his way. "Yes, Ducks, we are. So's Ely. Why don't you come join the fun?"   
Shuffling, he entered as if his feet had been forced. My cousin was much the same as I remembered him: average height, blubbery, and generally porcine. Flabby arms struggled to protect his bulbous backside. "Mum? What's going on? Why're these…?" he, at least, seemed to have the tact not to call my friends "freaks" to their faces.   
"I believe the word you 'ave forgotten, jeune Dursley, is 'wizards'," Fleur chose to speak at the moment, a little beaker then usual but still overtly beautiful, even if she made one's stomach clench with her anger. "As for the 'she,' to which you refer, surely you recognize your cousine, Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Snape, la douze Baronne de Calais; Countess Dover?"   
Both my aunt and cousin blinked for a moment, before I appended to this, "She means me. And this is Claudia-Éléonore Séléné Snape."   
"Dame de Calais," Fleur offered.   
"Lady Dover," Remus, speaking for the first time since entering, added equally.   
With a sigh, I continued, "My daughter."   
"What?" Dudley, who seemed to be the only one of the two able to vocalize any of his thoughts at the moment, grunted. "You can't- you're not old enough."   
"According to the Marriage Act of 1949, Part I Section 2, a marriage is void only if one or both of the parties are under the age of sixteen – that's the most recent Muggle Law I can remember. The Wizarding," Petunia cringed here, Dudley went glassy-eyed, "Marriage Act of 1283, called The Savoyards' Law, made the marriageable age for witches fourteen and wizards seventeen…" I saw I'd lost them both and blushed a little. "Er, no, I'm old enough. Married nine months, today."   
With discerning eyes, Petunia looked at Claudia, who was all of ten pounds three ounces and twenty-two inches long. Claudia might not have looked her three months, but she certainly didn't look like a newborn babe either. Shotgun Wedding, the thought was clearly running through her eyes. You can't act so high and mighty now, you freak, you whore-   
My own thoughts were mostly four-letter-words-I'd-not-use-in-public directed at her.   
"Anyway, I know you hate me almost as much as I hate you, so I'll make this quick and simple. The man who killed my parents is back again. 'Cause Mum died for me and you two are her only other blood relations, I'm protected as long as I live here. Or, I was, as the blood protection will last until tonight. Until 11:48, to be specific," seventeen years to the minute I was born. "Since I can't use it any more, I want to pass it on to my daughter. As I don't want her anywhere near you again, I just need you two to – willingly – transfer the protection to me. Then I'll leave you alone, forever if you want it, and never bother you again."   
I patted my dress to find the deed. For a moment, I couldn't find it and panicked before remembering I'd given it to Fleur to hold. Handing her Claudia, I took the tightly rolled scroll and undid the white ribbon that held it. An impossibly long (well, only ten or twelve feet) length of parchment unrolled at their feet, covered in very tiny, tight lines of words and runes. The centre held a very detailed drawing of a mitochondrion and two-inch high letters spelling:

 

The Covenant of The Matriline Blood-Trust of Lily Evans Potter

Expressing the Legal Conversion and General Easement

Of The Trust  
Tonks, still by the stairs, quickly turned a laugh into a cough. Well, laugh all she wanted, I was taking no chances.   
"Let's see…" The words rearranged themselves on the page so that the legal jargon came into a readable block above the heading, while the Latinate and Runic scuttled to the side. "Ah. Here we are… 'The Covenant of the Matriline Blood-Trust of Lily Margret Evans, hereafter to be known as The Trust, formed by the expiry of Lily Margret Evans Potter, daughter of Michael Valentine Evans and Margret Anne O'Neill Evans, henceforth known as TheTesator….' Budge over, let me see the meat of it, '…from which the recipient of The Trust's protection will pass from the initial cestui que use,' that's me, 'to the intended matriline descendents of the cestui que use until each comes of age, to be considered seventeen years of age, including but not limited to all currently living children of the cestui que use, which, as of 31 July 1997 of the Common Era, comprise: Claudia-Éléonore Séléné Snape, Dame de Calais, daughter of Severus Eteocles Snape, 7th Earl Dover, and the initial (prime) cestui que use, Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Back Potter Snape, 12thBaronne de Calais, hereafter to be known as The Secondary Beneficiary of The Trust, et sequens, provided that said non-prime cestui que use reside…'" I looked up to see blank stares all around me. My blush grew deeper. "Basically, I get a drop or two of blood from each of you and the blood protection breaks before tonight her, passing instead to my place, only protecting Claudia and not me."   
They were still silent, Petunia with fear, Dudley with what may have been confusion. I turned to Severus, as if trying o draw strength from his presence. But he was radiating a cold furry it would be bad to tap into right now. I hated them, for all they'd done to me. I hated them, because I needed them now. I hated them, because they breathed and slept and wept things that were so inimical to my lifestyle that both could not exist… I hated them, because that was all I could do, and if it took really complicated legal jargon to get me thinking about something besides letting Severus dose them with the nex ranae reginae, well, they'd just have to deal with it. It was hard to keep my head, surrounded by so much anger on my behalf. And I'd used Unforgivables before… I'd spent ten years and five summers in an unforgivable level of torment that no child deserved… Maybe I deserved it now… I'd killed. Killers, yes, torturers and rapists and genocides, but men and women with families and children who were now orphans. It'd be just, yes, to avenge myself for four thousand days and nights hid away in a cupboard-under-the-stairs, told I was less then human and deserving of nothing, not even the clothes on the back and the food in my belly…. It'd be right, to even the score, to make them pay, in blood, for all the housework and cooking and pain and yardwork and the rest. Repartitions, or something of the sort. Entirely legal. Entirely just. A thou quid here, a thou quid there… until the only thing that could settle the books would be my aunt's death, and her husbands. I might even let Dudley go, blinded, so that the last thing he could remember seeing would be his parents' mangled bodies… Mayhap I deserved all the pain, then, for thoughts I was having now, and all the terrible, unforgivable things I'd done. But I was only one, two, three, five, ten then. I hadn't killed anyone then, and you can't punish someone for something they've yet to do.   
…I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have believed in it. I want to see it, and if I am dead by then, let me rise again, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely I haven't suffered, simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, my manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else. I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer. But then there are the children, and what am I to do about them? That's a question I can't answer. For the hundredth time I repeat, there are numbers of questions, but I've only taken the children, because in their case what I mean is so unanswerably clear. Listen! If all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It's beyond all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony. Why should they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil for the harmony of the future? I understand solidarity in sin among men. I understand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers' crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see didn't grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old… No one understood "The Grand Inquisitor" better then I…   
I, like Ivan, would be content to suffer for all eternity for what I've done – I've already (and felt the bile rise in my throat at this, making me want to be ill all over the flower-print rug) consigned myself to my fate, what I must become… however Dark, however evil, to destroy the Darkness that took my parents. But what did I deserve as a child? What does any child who suffers as the Dursleys made me suffer at Azkaban South do to deserve such punishment? I understand justice – I understand that something must be done to even the books, and that the movement of Mum's blood protection from me to my daughter might cover it – but I don't want it. Does that make sense? I want to tear them limb from limb and watch them burn, or watch as my friends and protectors here with me hex her a hundred ways from Sunday, but I don't want to want that.   
I don't think it makes sense. 'Cause, you see, I shouldn't have to have justice. Not to forgive – forgiveness is a lie – but I shouldn't need justice in the first place. 'Cause I was only a child, you see, and I mightn't have grown up to kill and torture and wish torture upon my enemies. I might've been torn apart by Ripper at ten years old, and what would have been the point of all my suffering? What could would justice do then?   
Dostoevsky's words continued, unbidden, in my head. …I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for; that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidian mind of man; that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened with men – but though all that may come to pass, I don't accept it. I won't accept it…   
I breathed deep and tried to release my anger, though Severus was cold with it to my right, and Sirius red hot behind me.   
"What's in it for me?" Dudley asked suddenly.   
Remus, poor boy, didn't have the way of Dudley yet. "You'd be doing a good deed," he said, as if that'd turn Dudley any which way. "You and your family won't have the blood protection after tonight anyway. You're loosing nothing."   
I tried it the only way I thought it would work. "Five thousand pounds." That was, give or take, a hundred galleons. I'd spent more on shoes. At Fleur's urging, of course, but it was still spent. And it was still more then Vernon made in a month. "A couple drops of blood from each of you for five thou. I think that's more then a fair trade, don't you?"   
"Ten thou," my cousin tried.   
"Seven, and not a fiver more." I pulled out a cheque book – I'd prepared for this sort of thing – much to Severus's consternation, and wrote cheque for a thousand quid with silvery ink. Handing it over, "Sign and initial, I'll write you another. A bit of blood, you'll get half the rest in twenty pound notes. Same for your mum."   
He, eagerly, took the quill, and began to sign where I indicated:there, to indicate he understood he was the "…Dudley Nathanial Dursley, son of Vernon Todd Dursley and initial (prime) trustee, Petunia Michelle Evans Dursley, henceforth known as The Secondary Trustee…" referred to in the document; here, acknowledging that he would, "…accept as recompense an amount no less then one thousand three hundred ninety-nine galleons, sixteen sickles, twenty-seven knuts and not to exceed one thousand four hundred galleons, one knut to be delivered in British Muggle currency (pound sterling) in a manner benefiting the situation at the time of signing, 31 July 1997 of the Common Era, which stands at 1 galleon to 5 pound, in exchange for full and entire conversion of protection provided his dwelling and all members of his household with the formation of The Trust and easement to the initial cestui que use, hereafter to be known as The Tertiary Trustee, for the protection of The Secondary Beneficiary et sequens …" and finally, there, conceding that he knew, "… with the dissolution of The Trust concerning The Primary and the Secondary Trustees, all defences, fortifications, guards, guarantees, refuges, safeguards, safeties, securities, shelters, spellwork, protections, wards, et alii over the residence and household at Number Four Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, England as well as all dwellings, households, residences, et alii, maintained by the household of The Primary and Secondary Trustees in Surrey et alibi, will cease and return to as it was before the formation of The Trust by The Testator, at 11:48 post meridian 31 July 1997 of the Common Era, and be instilled in the dwellings, households, residences, et alii, of The Tertiary Trustee provided that The Secondary Beneficiary is in residence at the above stated time and continuing there et alibi until such time as The Secondary Beneficiary comes of age, the last Beneficiary in sequentia comes of age, or The Trust is legally and entirely converted to a Quaternary Trustee(s, in sequentia) eased onto a Beneficiary in sequentia of the matriline descent of The Testator…"   
I'd just written out another thou quid cheque and watched Dudley greedily stuff it into his front pocket when Petunia, at last, spoke up. Perhaps it was because she was seeing I'd made good on my first two promises and she needed to lower me down a peg, maybe because she'd seen the birthday outfit Fleur bought be in Bloomingdales and assumed I couldn't have afforded it myself, I dunno. But she spat at me as Severus was getting a tiny, sharp silver knife from his pocket to prick my cousin's thumbs with. I still wasn't certain (though I was happier now that at least "The Secondary Trustee" had signed all the legal jargon, which was now budging aside a place for his bloody thumbprint in a circle of berkana, thurisaz and eihwaz runes that had once sat towards the bottom of the long roll of parchment) I didn't want to shove the knife between his ribs, but I thought I could contain myself. I'd scold myself for these thoughts later. "The only way, I'm sure, these cheques won't bounce is that one," she flicked her eyes towards Severus. "I remember this one, from last summer. You said he was a teacher at that freak school of yours. Got him to knock you up, I imagine, or slutted around and claimed it was his-"   
Severus slammed the handled of the knife against Petunia's temple, and her eyes rolled up into the back of her head. "Won't keep her out long," he told Dudley, and handed the knife over to me.   
But Dudley was looking up at him, wide-eyed, not with fear (well, not mostly), but rather a confused mix of, well, confusion and slow understanding. Then, turning to me. "I don't understand." I about screamed in frustration before he continued, equally slowly. "Where are you going to go?"   
An interesting emotion flooded through me. I think it was something of sympathy for my cousin, which I'd never felt before. No, not sympathy, but some sort of Merlin!-he-actually-thought-about-someone-other-than-himself sort of relief akin to sympathy. "Severus and I have rooms at my school. I've still another Year to go, besides." It felt weird, this concern, this talking to Dudley about things that normally I would laugh to think of telling him.   
His thumb now pricked, he made his bloody stamp on the deed, remarking as he pressed it against the paper, "Oh," in his wonderful, intelligent, and thoughtful way. Then, his remaining quid in hand, he thudded his way out of the room and thumped up the stairs. When he was halfway up, and his mum coming round, he said in the saddest tone I'd ever heard him use (which wasn't saying much), "I-" he paused a moment, "I nicked the stuff you left behind from the bin, when mum tossed it all, last year. It's in your cupboard."   
I was too busy trying to think what I might have left behind that Diddykins felt might be worth saving to notice the hush that descended on the room. But the temperature in the room seemed to have dropped a degree or three, and that alone alerted me something was not quite right. Quickly, I looked towards the door, well, the hall by the door, half expecting something to have gone wrong. The blood wards failing early, maybe, or some new kind of silent bomb made by the Death Eaters, that could stun discriminately without sound or light. The blue light that, at times, forms an aura around me burst forth from my skin, and I felt Niynhi growl low within me.   
My wand was already in hand and I'd half-moved into a crouch when I realized that there was no silent bomb, that the blood wards hadn't failed early. No one was moving, certainly (at least not Tonks and Remus, the only two I could see clearly without moving), but eyes were rounding fast, and nerves beat with unheeded orders beneath taught skin.   
Slowly, I reached to the floor, to pick up the deed that had fallen and rolled itself on the floor. I needed one more set of signatures, one more bloody thumbprint, and I'd be done here. I could buy the note for the mortgage from the bank that owned it, raze the house, and salt the earth. I could build a dog kennel here instead, or something that would annoy the neighbours. As I straightened, Remus found his voice.   
"What, precisely, does your cousin mean by 'your cupboard'?"   
I swallowed loudly and visibly, turning instinctually to Severus for strength. But he didn't know, and couldn't help himself sometimes. Niynhi wouldn't even have thought to stop Severus when I caught his eyes. The muscles in his jaw twitched. "Mrs. Lupin," he said, not one ever to call any of my friends whom he taught by their names, though I've asked them to – and they still call him Professor Snape, in mutual dislike – "if you please would open the door beside you?"   
Tonks was the closest, and, perhaps, she'd thought it odd to see such a sturdy lock on a closet door. I don't know. All I know is, with a quick alohomora, she got the door open. I knew what she would see, the moment she turned for it. I knew I could stop her. I didn't want them to know. I wanted them not to know the extent of my awful childhood. I didn't want them to see the lumpy old mattress that surely still lay there, the drawings on the walls that the Dursleys probably hadn't bothered to paint over; maybe even a loose school paper, yellowed and caked with dust, sent home by the nurse asking about the frequency of my bruises that I knew better then to show my "guardians."   
But…   
I couldn't bring myself to move; every fibre of my being seemed to be stuck with the shock of it. Only hen the door slammed open and she began to examine the small space in the cupboard-under-the-stairs did my feet find themselves again, almost tripping over each other in attempt to stop her from seeing my shame.   
Severus's hand caught me on the shoulder. "Why didn't you tell me?" his black eyes asked, hurt, but only I could tell that.   
"I didn't want anyone to know," my body answered, burying itself in his arms as my eyes struggled not to tear. I was sleep-deprived, hormonal, and being placed in a very emotional situation. I was lucky I didn't. "I didn't want to remember."   
With his arms, "It's over now. Rest."   
With mine, "Not yet."   
Even as this silent conversation was going on, the others were quickly were coming to the proper conclusion. Fleur only restrained herself because she still held Claudia, who'd gone silent in our silence, but the others quickly turned on Petunia.   
"You kept your own blood in a cupboard," Remus accused, a glimmer of yellow creeping into his soft eyes.   
Coldly, Sirius, "Éléonore, how long…?" but he couldn't finish that thought without the words catching in his throat. I knew what he was thinking now: if only he hadn't been in Azkaban. If only he'd not gone after Peter, but stayed with me. If only my parents hadn't listened to him and not changed secret keepers.   
I couldn't answer him. My husband did, holding my glowing form with one arm (which was good, as I doubted I could have held myself at the moment) and trying not to hex Petunia, who was now fully awake and had moved from afraid to stupidly proud, with the wand in his other. "Until she went to Hogwarts, Black. Ten years," he added unnecessarily, "they kept her there when there were two empty bedrooms upstairs."   
The unasked question from Remus, the most sensitive of all those with us to this situation. Only he'd been hated for what he was, feared. Only he could guess at what I was feeling. "Why didn't you tell anyone?"   
From Tonks, who knew a little of that fear herself and a little more of the desire for justice, for vengeance. It was a certain type of auror, no matter what the reason, who became a freedom fighter on her off time. Maybe because another word for vigilantes of that sort was rebel and a third traitor: "This is wrong. The Dursleys must pay."   
From Fleur, silent as she held Claudia, who in turn was unusually quiet, even for her came a string of unspoken expletives as she tried to hold herself together.   
And Sirius? He was a well of barely contained anger.   
I couldn't look at them. I wanted to keep my face hidden in Severus, who at least could see all of it without me having to say anything, but they wouldn't let me. They assaulted me with unheard questions, left my ears ringing in slow and sticky silence, where every slight movement Petunia made seemed like the booming of a cannon or a roll of thunder across the heavy sky.   
At last I turned, trying to ignore them, on Petunia. "Same for you," I said. "Just a signature and thumbpr-"   
A hex blew past my face, fluttering my hair. Without thinking, I raised a blue-lighted hand and tried to catch it. It dissolved in the strange light.   
I got angry. I got really, really, really angry. It was my bloody life people. I'd brought them along for comfort, for safety, not to attack and kill my aunt! Granted, she deserved it, but if anyone was going to be doing any murdering here, it would be me, who earned it! Why couldn't they just leave well enough alone? Why couldn't they trust me to handle it? I'd been handing it for sixteen bloody years for all it was worth, and nothing bad had happened yet. Yes, I was practically a house elf, but I wasn't seriously hurt. I wasn't maimed, or raped, or sold to child-stealers, or murdered. That was something. I'd stayed alive, which is more then what most people could have done in this situation. I could handle it, by Merlin's slipping stockings! I was seventeen bloody years old! I saved the Philosopher's Stone at eleven! I'd fought Riddle's Horcrux shade and his murderous Basilisk at twelve! I'd confronted a convicted murderer at thirteen, and saved more then his soul with my Patronus, which few full grown wizards could do! I'd survived dragons and Grindylows and every other vile thing my Fourth Year, and saw Voldemort return! Who'd led the Maquis in battle against Umbridge? Who'd killed Lucius Malfoy, even if only by accident, and kept the Dark from getting the prophesy? Who'd researched Horcruces and Tom bloody Riddle all last year to find a way to stop them? Who'd found Ravenclaw's long lost diadem, now hidden under my sink? Who'd gone with Dumbledore – who'd been, alone, trusted by Dumbledore enough to go – to find the fake locket? Who'd watched him die, die for them? Who'd stood, practically alone except for a handful of Hufflepuffs who wouldn't know real battle if it danced naked in front of them, at the doors of the school to trap the invaders? Not them, certainly! And who'd done it all while handling being married at sixteen (which, while to a man I loved, was still not the easiest of things) and having a bloody baby and killing Bellatrix Lestrange and-!   
…I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be, when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: 'Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.' When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears…   
And-!   
…'Thou art just, O Lord!' then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can't accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take my own measures. You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen if I live to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry aloud with the rest, looking at the mother embracing the child's torturer, 'Thou art just, O Lord!' But I don't want to cry aloud then. While there is still time, I hasten to protect myself, and so I renounce the higher harmony altogether…   
And…   
"Enough!" I screamed, not knowing 'till later it came out as a Parcel hiss, and my light pulsed outward for a moment, growing a good half-foot from my body before sinking back in.   
I hate Petunia. That's all I know. And maybe she deserves death. Maybe some of the dead deserve life. I'm not a judge. It's not for me to decide. I'm just a wanna-be–Chosen-One–Maquis-leading–pseudo-lawyer.   
Pen shaking, the "…Petunia Michelle Evans Dursley, daughter of Michael Valentine Evans and Margret Anne O'Neill Evans, henceforth known as The Prime Trustee…" signed, same as Dudley, not even waiting for or asking of the pounds I'd given Dudley. Her thumbprint, in its own circle of runes, looked wobbly. When she was done, I rolled up the document and tied it with the now plum-coloured ribbon. She tried to escape soon after. They wouldn't let her, by spell and force.   
I couldn't watch their anger, though I knew it wouldn't come out in torture and death, like the Death Eaters. We weren't like them. Not quite yet, anyway. I took Claudia out of the room and went into the kitchen, conjuring myself a Gala apple when I couldn't find anything fresh and crisp and green in the fridge.   
Anger abated, I didn't know what to do. I wanted to cry, partly, mostly because life shouldn't be as screwed up as this. You graduate school, then you get a job, get married, and have kids. You don't have your parents murdered because of you when you're but a baby. Your parents' murderer doesn't come back to finish the job sixteen years later. You didn't stay up late at night, waiting for your friends and family to come home alive from a night that might be riddled with attacks, a map of the United Kingdom marked up in a barely sensible way behind a painting of the white cliffs of Dover, and pies baking in the Russian oven because I needed something to do with my hands (…the Sea of Faith was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. But now I only hear its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating, to the breath of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world…). You didn't just become Proxy Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement at age seventeen because one Mrs. Hopkirk of Islington had washed up dead on Southend-on-Sea and no one wanted her deputy, Pius Thicknesse – an utter tool if there ever was one – to be named Head of DMLE with her death, because, if something happened to Scrimgerour, the Head of DMLE would become Minister until an election could be held.   
I didn't want to be Minister. No more then I wanted to be the people's "Chosen One". Not even Proxy, just-in-case, Minister. I could barely handle my own life, let alone the "Sovereign State of England and the Suzerains of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland!" Because, if that happened, I'd be the leader of a government that would, by that point, be inevitably in exile. You don't just do that to girls with a year more of school to go, despite having already taken their DADA NEWTS, and a baby of their own to take care of, let alone Horcruces to deal with.   
I could walk out to the car and wait for my "guard" to come along. Let them lecture and threatened Petunia until they were red in the face, and then take me back to HQ, where I belonged with my law books and maps and bassinet.   
But…   
…It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its un-expiated tears to 'dear, kind God'! It's not worth it, because those tears are un-atoned for…   
It would be so easy to walk into the living room of this prison and cast an AK on my aunt. To go upstairs and do it on my cousin. To lay in wait until my uncle came home from work and do the same to them.   
…They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible? By their being avenged?…   
Or to cast a demitimens – The Mindbender Hex – on any one of them, to make them think they were trapped in a dark, dank, dusty cupboard-under-the-stairs, slowly worked and starved to death.   
…By what do I care for avenging them? what do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is a hell?…   
Or really trap them in dark, dusty cupboards. Or give them the nex ranae reginae Severus had brought along, the poison in its phial clear but opaque and glittering like a prism in the least of light.   
…I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don't want more suffering. And if the suffering of children go to swell the sum of suffering which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price…   
But what then, Ivan, do I do?


	27. In Which I Am Assaulted by Hormonal Teenage Witches and Wizards

"Caffeine," I told myself, "is what I need." Caffeine was the glorious god that had descended from the heavens – more useful then any angel, more dangerous and wonderful then Prometheus's fire – to help poor girls like me. Yes. Massive amounts of caffeine. And sugar, even though I was already feeling sick from only having ate pie and birthday cake all day. Weren't those supposed to be good for shock? I supposed I was in shock. Or hysterics. I dunno. My emotions reactions seemed off, even to me, and I had declared myself unfit for human company. I left Claudia with Mrs. Weasley in the parlour on my way in, saying I needed an adult half-hour, locked my bedroom door, and took the longest shower that even a magical hot water heater could deal with, curled up in the corner of the tub as the spray fell over my hanging head.

There were knocks and pounds at the door, but either I was stronger then they and their magics failed on the door or they respected me enough not to try. I don't know what I thought was more likely, or which I'd prefer. Still, it was nice, to be alone. Paracelsus was downstairs, singing along to one of the radios or attempting to teach himself how to read or something of the sort, so, for once, I was completely alone. Until the instant I was, I can't tell you how much I liked being alone, knowing I could find people when I was ready, not have them foisted on me against my will.

Foist. Such an interesting word. I wonder-

See? See what I'm talking about? Not fit for human company at all. Or werewolf. Or Runespoor. Is there anything else I'm missing? Owl. Not for owl company at all. I'm going absolutely sodding mad.

Oh well. Nice day for it.

I could have just walked out the door, left Azkaban South entirely. Maybe I even should have. I just traded Claudia for the vial of nex ranae reginae in Severus's pocket and asked them, coldly polite, to wait for me in the car. Then I closed all of the curtains on the first floor, and locked the kitchen door. When I returned to the living room, Petunia was still sitting in shock on the living room, not having moved since placing her thumb on the deed now in Fleur's unbreakable and un-break-into-able purse. There was a single russet smudge, the merest hint of blood, on her white coffee table; she didn't seem to notice it.

I set down two Sheriffs of Nottingham – a drink she enjoyed, a mix of vodka and apple cider – beside the stain, and sat on the chair Sirius had recently vacated. "I'm sorry," I told her, sipping mine and making a face at it. Perhaps it was just inexperience with alcohol, and what little I had with that having been quite a while back, what with me having been pregnant for most of the last year, but I thought it tasted foul. I think the Pumpkin Pixie the Twins – pumpkin juice and gin – served up the team after we won that last cup might actually have tasted better, and that's saying something. Anyway, "I didn't mean for them to go at you like that," I told her, placing my drink back down.

I expected her to say something, but she didn't. Just stared at me. I stared right back, and, after a moment, she looked back down. Her eyes are just like Lily's, I knew she was thinking. I hated it when people thought that. I was my own person, after all. That gave me the strength to continue.

I should have just killed her. That probably would be better, in the end. "Petunia," I said conversationally after a minute or so of thick, dank silence, "I tried to figure out once how much I should sue you for, when I came of age. I was never good with math; I didn't bother paying attention in primary school, you might remember, because Dudley never did and I couldn't let myself be better then Dudley. I read instead." Oh the things I read instead. "And I didn't take Arithmancy when I had the chance, so I've never really gotten much better. Fleur, though, is a genius at the maths; works at Gringotts, so she'd have to be. She's too junior to be allowed to be put in charge of a family account, but I've made it known that, when she's got enough years under her Prada belt, I'd like her to be in charge of the family money. Apparently there's a lot of it, what with the barony before the Revolution, and some apparently wonderful cremant d'Alsace brut rosé varieties of wine developed under my great-grandfather, Gabriel-Zacharie, and his father, Zacharie-Richard, in the 1860s and '70s. And something to do with north Africa after the war… but I'm not exactly sure. And then there's the Prince money… Severus's mum didn't take real good care of it, so it's not as much as it once was, only about forty or fifty thou more then the Potier fortune…"

I was rambling at this point, obviously, but couldn't help it. It wasn't like my dearest aunt had brought herself to say anything yet. Maybe Sirius had cast a silencer on her. I dunno. I didn't care, though. Maybe I should have. "So, anyway, I tried to figure out what maid service for ten years would cost, and cooking, and lawn care, and what not. And then there's inflation to deal with, and the exemplary damages, and so, in the end, I decided it would be more cost effective simply not to bother suing, as it would take a lot of money to hire the team of forensic accountants that would be needed to sort the mess out, keep said mess out of the papers, radio, et cetera." I pushed my highball towards her, noticing she'd drank hers quickly, as if in attempt to forget this day as quickly has possible. I had envied her that.

Pausing at landing, I remembered my reason for hiding upstairs in the first place and the need that had driven me to leave it for some hope of caffeinated release.

I had held up the now visibly half-empty vial of nex ranae reginae when she was halfway through my drink. I felt sick even then, at what I had done. "I know a lot of curses. Very few of them nice," I told her as her brain struggled with what the half-empty phial meant. Her eyes went wide as she realized the truth of it, and went to her throat, dropping the glass she'd been holding to her immaculate carpet. "But you are my aunt, and you took me in, no matter how much you'd have rather have taken me to an orphanage. You signed the blood protection for Claudia. And so I thank you, with this, and hope that the poison kills you in some dignified way you don't deserve." And I'd locked the door behind me on the way out.

Was it wrong of me? Was it? Was it truly? To encourage my aunt to drink a beverage laced with nex ranae reginae that she'd never have even had if I hadn't offered it to her? I'd killed Bellatrix Lestrange with such a… simple… pain-free curse. And the now-deceased Death Eater had to have been at least slightly worse then Petunia – Petunia had never killed anyone, at least, not that I knew of; - I could have done that if I wanted to kill her so badly. Since I wanted to kill her so badly. Instead I dosed her with a poison that could be anything from la morte di sogno, which, if she was so poisoned, would kill her next them she'd a bad dream to mfaransa mamunch, a slow death that would, very slowly, do much the same as a Dementor's kiss, though usually people hung themselves before they lost the entirety of their souls. It could be fast, or slow, or painful, or a gentle death in her sleep.

I still don't know why I did it. Out of all the things I could have done. Should have done.

There were voices in the kitchen I didn't want to deal with, but I also didn't think I could make it back up the stairs without some fizzy, sinfully drugged carbonated beverage, so, weighing the options of offending anyone with my currently inappropriate emotional reactions or having to drag myself up the stairs before enjoying sugary sustenance, I decided that the people in the kitchen were bound to be grown enough to get over my rudeness in time. To my surprise, the voices didn't stop when I entered, though it wasn't until I'd found a can of Muggle soda and downed half its contents that I started to pay any attention to what was being said.

"…frankly, Professeur, I care not the slightest."

"Then, mademoiselle," Severus taunted her, "you should have no problem staying within headquarters tonight."

Fleur was not one to be so easily dissuaded. "Personnellement, I 'ad thought you would prefer to 'ave une fête en l'honneur de la future mariée be carried out outside of your presence."

I didn't speak French, but I figured I'd the gist of it. "Let them have their party," I told asked as I helped myself to the better half of an apple pie. "Get a couple of cellular phones or something so have in case something happens and you need to call 'em back. If they won't work here, I'm sure there's a phone booth nearby you could use…. Or maybe portable floo?" my head spun with the possibilities. A lighter? A candle? You'd need something with a flame… I laughed a little before realizing that Severus and Fleur were talking about people possibly dying tonight because I'd turned seventeen and the outrageousness of having a bachelorette party in the middle of a war. Definitely not fit for human company.

Frowning, I headed with the pie tin, soda, and a fork which, from its size, had probably been more intended to the eating of small molluscs then pastries, to the door, "Just where do you think you're going, Alexandrie-Margaux?"

"Er, upstairs?" I told Fleur, trying to balance my burden as I turned.

"No, you are not. You must convince your 'usband 'ere that we are responsible, mature adults and 'ave been working very 'ard to destroy l'Obscurité and deserve a much earned break."

Furrowing my brows perhaps more then was necessary (and trying hard to think that far back), "Isn't that the excuse you used this morning?"

"Our 'excuse,' as you call it," she informed me, "for this morning was that l'héroïne de la Bataile de la Tour was in need of a much delayed celebration of many things, the least of which being 'er birth."

Groaning, I turned to Severus and quoted, "Don't ask, for it is forbidden to know, what final fate The Gods will give me or you. Don't play with Babylonian fortune-telling either. It is better to endure whatever will be. Whether Jupiter has allotted to you many more winters or this final one, which even now wears out the Tyrrhenian Sean on the rocks opposite, be smart; drink your wine. Scale back your long hopes to a short time for, while we speak, envious time will have already fled. Seize the day and place no trust in tomorrow."

"Horace's Odes." Then, clearly not appreciating how much effort it took me to think of something to say that actually made sense as a reply, "One of these days you're going to find a way to say all the thoughts in your head without resorting to somebody else's words."

I could only snort. Severus was as bad as I was and he knew it. I would never be the author that other authors had been – and, besides, they had leant their thoughts to the world, to put into words emotions and places and faces and thoughts that no one else could describe. I was sure Horace – or Dostoevsky or O'Neill – would not be bothered by my borrowing of a couple phrases, of the use of some words. Or, if in life they would have, it didn't matter now: they were the food of daffodils now. What a shame.

"And what do you mean 'them?'" Fleur asked, glaring at me from the table with icy eyes.

As patiently as I could mange, "I am sleep deprived, Fleur-flower. "I am sleep deprived and running only on a mixture of sugars and caffeine. I'm not fit for anyone's company. Plus-" I shouldn't have mentioned the sugar. Dropping the pie, fork, and unopened soda, it was all I could do to make it to the first floor bathroom in time.

Luckily I suppose you could say, most the Order was out of HQ on "business." I cursed the un-sipped caffeine for having betrayed me this way.

"I think."

"Mère, hasss."

"Gone crazy."

"No I've not," I insisted as Severus came to me with a beautiful vial of pale blue antiemetic. Potions Masters were the true gift of Gods. No. That was wrong. Potions Masters could make poisons like the one I dosed Petunia with. Well, something was a gift; I just didn't know what it was yet. I downed half the vial as quick as I could, then sicked it right up.

"Have you had anything besides cake to eat today?" he scolded me, chucking me a towel.

Glaring over the rim of the porcelain bowl, "I'm not a child, Sev'rus."

"You said yourself that sugar was-"

"Yes," I told him, not a bit patiently, "but I've also gotten maybe three hours of sleep in the last forty-eight, been on emotional rollercoaster that would send Disney into pangs of jealousy, hormones you could throw a rock at from space and hit, slipped a Mickey into my aunt's drink after trying to restrain myself from cursing her five ways from Friday, and…" I think there was something else. Some other excuse… I chucked the towel right back at him and leaned my head against the cool bowl. "Oh yes. I can't remember the last proper thing I ate…." Sadly, "I just want to go to bed."

"Mademoiselle Delacour is flooing Poppy."

"But I'm fine," I protested. His eyebrows arched at me, as if asking me to look at my surroundings and say that again. Pouting like a five year old, "Well, I will be."

He had the nerve to laugh at me. Laugh. Like I was funny or something. I hissed an explicative or eight his way, and even Sus joined in a moment later when the Runespoor slithered up his leg and said, "Père, you."

"Are in."

"Tra-Bull," before two of heads began humming along with the radio they'd left on in the parlour.

At least my husband knew better then to look at me for a translation. Crossing his arms, he leaned against the wall and smirked at me. Narrowing my eyes after a moment of dry-heaving as if I wished to singe him with my laser eyes, I asked him in no uncertain terms just what he thought was so amusing.

"You, of course." I think I might even have growled a bit at this. "You always surprise me with how strong you are." A questioning groan was my only reply. "To have gone through all of today, if you've been feeling this bad, without saying a word." His mouth tightened a bit, "Why didn't you tell?"

"Tell you what?" that unpleasant tickle in the back of my throat was starting to get… unpleasant. Oh yes, Éléonore. That was brilliant. Pure genius you are. I can see why Voldemort's soooo scared of you.

"He meansss the cupboard," Par decided to his.

"No, he meansss that Mère wasss feeling so bad."

"Acel, you're an idiot."

"Mère! Tell Susss to stop saying that!"

"Susss, please stop calling your brother an idiot," I managed.

"But he isss an idiot, Mère!"

At this point I banged my head against the wall and was disappointed when it did nothing to relieve the headache I was now getting atop everything else. If I was lucky, I might not toss up my intestines, like I felt I might. "I don't care if he'sss an idiot or not-"

"Hey!"

"-just don't call him one, okay?"

"Fine. Acel, sie sind ein Schwachkopf."

I shook my head at the Runespoor's antics and immediately regretted it. And that was how Madam Pomprey found me a moment later, hunched over the toilet. "Éléonore, it's been a month-and-a-half since I last saw you," she said, setting a carpet bag in the pedestal sink and perfunctorily putting two fingers on the inside of my wrist; "I was beginning to think I might be able to go on holiday after all. So, Severus, what trouble has she gotten into this time?"

Though she said the last bit with a smile, I felt myself grow angered irrationally at the comment. "She has done absolutely nothing but have a very exhaustive day." I wasn't sure what it was I intended to do after that – perhaps just head on back up to my room and deal with my inappropriate emotional responses there, - but I never made it.

"And so she," (Madam Pomprey emphasized this by putting a hand on my shoulder to keep me seated on the cool tiles), "is going to stay right where she is until I can figure out what's wrong with you."

"Do you want me to go through the list?" I almost said, and only did it because I knew that it would get me no where.

"How have you been sleeping?"

"Terribly."

"About how many hours?"

"Three, four at a time – Claudia's only just started sleeping through the night. Maybe six a night," I offered as I saw Paracelsus slide off Severus's arm and climb into Madam Pomprey's bag.

"Eating properly?"

"When I'm hungry." Or remember. I'd not been much hungry since Dumbledore's death, despite my stress cooking of pies and other pastries.

"You should be eating a lot more – if you're still breastfeeding?" I looked away at that and continued to do so as Severus, more confused then he ever would have let a student or any other professor see if the world was still spinning the way it was supposed to (which it mightn't be. Crazy things were happening… Poisoning Petunia and offerings of pseudo-legal positions in not-yet-exiled governments and whatnot…), assured her I was.

I think I laughed then. I know I've argued that I'm strong and capable. That I can take care of myself. That I've done things no grown person has done. Perhaps it seems contrary to argue the opposite just a breath later. Maybe it's only out of desire to be capable I argued so fiercely earlier. I doubt it, though. I think it's the desire to have the childhood that was ripped from me restored, to have someone take care of me even as I've a human-nestling and a snake-nestling to take care of. Everyone, even Severus, had tossed me Dumbledore's still-warm mantle without even realizing they'd done it. Head the Order? The British Government? It was madness. I could hear them shouting in my ears in future days, all of the Muggles and Wizards who didn't take up arms, who didn't fight against this coming Darkness, shouting, "It's your sin if I suffer! It's your moral failure!" and expecting me to take care of them, when all I wanted to do was finish my Seventh Year and graduate and maybe become a lawyer or a teacher or maybe be a homemaker until Claudia was old enough to go to primary school. Maybe grow apples – green ones – just because apples sounded so good right now, even as sick as I was feeling. But still the voices around me still would shout, "…You're so proud of yourself, you think that you're pure and good – but you can't be good, so long as I'm wretched." (But I'm not pure and good. I admit it. I'm awful. I'm evil. I'm a murderess and torturer and poisoner of blood kin. You, you Muggles out there who have no idea the war that the isle and, indeed, all the world, is facing, you are the lucky ones. You can rest safe in your beds at night and not dream of war and death and tragedy – or of boys with your name and your father's face in world so similar to your own it hurt to think about. You can have bachelorette parties without fear, birthdays without anxiety; weddings without homicidal gate crashers. And you, you wizards out there that won't fight the good fight, who might be murdered in your homes like the rest of us, who might wake up to find an owl at your door saying they've taken your husband, your mother, your son and here's their half-blood heart to remember them by, who might, after everything, say that it's all a lie, that Voldemort's not back, that I killed him sixteen years ago, that the people going missing aren't connected, they're just missing – it happens, - and the MoM has always had one crisis or another to work through – this isn't any news at all, - and that the people being murdered and the feral werewolves on the loose and the new restrictions on international travel aren't anything unusual – you I pity. You are lucky, in that you forget daily that we are fighting a war from which our fathers and sons and wives and cousins mightn't return alive, but you are unlucky too because, for some of you, at least, that day will come, and there will be that knock on your door saying, "I'm sorry ma'am, but…" and you fall crying to your knees, right there in the door and cry as if you think if you cry hard enough it won't be true, and have to listen as they tell you that someone you loved has died in something they won't admit either is war, or there won't be a knock, the door will just crash in and wizards and witches in black robes and bone masks will enter and offer you a lesson in pain and fear before they kill you, making you watch as all the others die… I'm the wretched one, you fools, for I can never forget, because maybe even now my aunt is dying of a poison I put in her drink and her son, my cousin, is looking on with fear, unable to figure out what is happening to the one person, I think, who loved him for what he was, not what she thought he was….). But still they will shout, "My misery is the measure of your sin. My contentment is the measure of your virtue. I want this kind of world, today's world, it gives me my share of authority. it allows me to feel important – make it world for me! do something!" (But do what? Where are the other Horcruces? How do I destroy the one I have? What do I do now, when the leader of the free Wizarding World died for pathetic little me?) "– how do I know what? it's your problem and your duty! You have the privilege of strength but I – I have the right of weakness! That's a moral absolute!"

I'm almost defiantly sure I laughed then, as Madam Pomprey asked me more questions I didn't need to answer to know the truth: stress can do funny things to your body. I was seventeen and had done quite a many things and could do quite a many more if given time and the proper books, but they wanted me to save them. Not Severus, I think. He probably knew I needed him to save me and, if he didn't, then he wasn't the man I'd fallen in love with, though I didn't think that was the case. And maybe not some of my other friends in the Order, who knew me as a person. But the proverbial they, the ones who read and wrote the newspapers, the ones who'd heard my story as a small child and said, "I want to be like her, mummy, when I grow up," the ones who thought I hadn't needed to work to be strong and quick and full of spells – they wanted me to save them. From Voldemort. From themselves. From their past and their future, and all that lay between. They wanted that from me, as they'd wanted that from Dumbledore, who'd only been, what? Anyone? Only a hundred sixteen or so when he died, white haired and so very, very tired. They'd worn him out before his time, had taken his life and his life force… Had he ever been married? Fallen in love? I knew he'd a brother, but what of the rest of his family? His friends? Or had he lost all that he might have had as the years wore on and he became (in their eyes) less a human and more a hero… The only way I could escape it – my mind stealing, once more, Ayn Rand's words – was to shrug. I was one of the titans holding up their world, and, if I shrugged, I could be free… But, to be free, I'd condemn the world to Darkness, and I already knew I wouldn't do that. I was willing to do anything to keep more little girls from being orphaned…

"It's just a panic attack," I heard myself telling them. Give me a good night's rest, a cuppa, and a decent meal and I'll be fine." Any other time I would have been happy to have someone fussing over me, making up for all the days and nights in which I had thought I could never be loved, that I was unworthy of love or affection or even a kind thought, destined for a palace without a name because there were no places for monsters like me. But not now. I just wanted to sleep, and told them so.

"I don't think that's what it is…" Madam Pomprey said.

I noticed Severus wasn't in the bathroom anymore. The door was closed. I still felt awful, though I'd managed to keep down the other half of the pale blue potion for a solid three minutes now. From the tingle of magic I felt, there might even have been a privacy charm put on the door – but that could have been something left over from earlier in the day for some I-don't-ever-want-to-know reason – and now that I was starting to feel that I wouldn't regurgitate my stomach in tiny pieces, I was starting to feel better enough to worry that maybe I was wrong and something was wrong with me.

I was going crazy and probably deserved death or, at the very least, eternal torment for the lives I've taken. I probably deserved a lot of things. But I didn't want to die. I wanted to live. Bloody apple orchard and more grandchildren then you could shake a trout at and all that. My thoughts were just crazy ones, one I'd never allow myself to think if given half the option…

…Still, I hoped there was a hell for the good out there, somewhere, because it wasn't natural for me to think I could get away with being happy after all I'd done. Perhaps that was a normal thought for an unwitting murderess, perhaps to be expected after a childhood like mine…

And, besides, this was only stress. Possibly a bad case of the flu exacerbated by cake and caffeine in unreasonably large amounts. Yes, that was it. As soon as I'd rested and a proper meal in me, I'd be fine. I'd be able to nurse Claudia again and not go crazy thinking about my monstrous tendencies. I'd not cry at the thought of my self-immolation. I'd be strong again. I could fight again. I could find a way to destroy Voldemort and his Horcruces…

"I'm fine," I insisted. "It's just been a bad couple of days, I forgot the basics, but I promise I'll try and take better care of myself. Okay?"

Too busy trying to stand up, I didn't see the look that must have crossed her face at this comment. "Have you been taking any potions?"

Not seeing where she was going, "Er, no. Just that antiemetic a minute or so ago. Where'd Severus go?"

"To find a glass of whisky, I believe. No potions at all?"

"No." I was slightly irritated now. What was she getting at, and why didn't she just say it already before I snapped and said something I regretted. Or thought something else stupid. Ayn Rand indeed…

"Not even," a faint blush here, "contraceptive potions?"

Slowly, "I've been breastfeeding, Madam Pomprey."

She waved off the implication that I'd take something that might stay in my body long enough to hurt Claudia next time she fed and continued as if she'd said something very profound. Maybe she had, I wasn't thinking too clearly at the moment. "Yes, and while that does mitigate the risk somewhat…" Risk? Risk? What was she talking about? Why wouldn't she just tell me and let me sleep?

Sleep?

Sleep!

I felt my legs buckle underneath me, and next thing I knew I was sitting back on the floor, staring up at the exasperated nurse. "Oh, you think…?"

"Think? Dear Éléonore, I did the spell five minutes ago." Five minutes ago? She'd not even been here that long. At my insistence of this, she calmly handed me her watch and said, "I've been here at least half-hour. Might I ask what you were thinking about so intently that you didn't notice me telling you, five minutes ago, you're pregnant?"

Dumbledore. Ayn Rand. War.

Merlin's beard! "Oh-"

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

In my defence, I'm not an idiot. I know the law fairly well, read books with big words in them, and, most importantly, have kept myself alive for seventeen years, which is more then I could say about some people. But it really had been a stressful forty-eight hours. That didn't assuage Madam Pomprey though, and she feared that I might miscarry if I kept up my current level of activity (which is to say, staying up most the night, partying through the morning, and poisoning relatives in the afternoon). And so came the demand for bed rest and Severus, ever one to not want to see me in pain, enforced this as strongly as one might imagine a former Death Eater might.

Severus. Though we had never talked about it, it'd never been my intention for Claudia to be an only child, as alone as I had been, and Severus. What Severus's thought on children were… well, I still wasn't sure. I suppose he was happy. No, that's wrong too. I knew he was pleased, but he, like I, hadn't thought for another child for a while yet. We wanted the war to be over, for one, and I wanted to be out of school for another. I didn't know if I could go through another year, my final year, of school like last; growing larger and larger as everyone else stared, trudging with a book bag and an aching back up and down devious stairs; unable to play Quidditch, as silly as that was… And it was so stupid too. To get pregnant unintentionally – to have one contraceptive failure – that could be explained away, as much as anyone did any explaining for that sort of thing. To become so again, not even a year later… This new one, as far as anyone could tell at this point, would be due in mid-February.

Merlin, I was going to have Irish twins.

It was so completely unfair. I mean, I'd read the books I'd been, too my embarrassment, been forced to order as Hogwarts, one might suspect, didn't exactly have a plethora of What to Expect when you're Expecting. I was all but exclusively breastfeeding, Claudia was (only barely) three months old, and I'd yet too… Oh, I can't think of any wonderful euphemisms for it right now. Just imagine I said something amusing about Quidditch pitches and maintenance… I guess the "contractor" needed more time to finish the "improvements"… No, that's not funny at all. Especially when the books told me that breastfeeding worked as a contraceptive like 99.52% of the time. Why, oh why do I have to be the random 0.48% that just has to go and make the statistic not-perfect? Granted, I'm not actually angry that I'm pregnant, only at the timing of it. Claudia won't even be one when her brother or sister is born!

Okay, I've gotten a hold of myself. It's just lying in bed all day get's boring fast, even if I can see the logic behind it; even if I felt that unbearable fear on the morning of Fleur's wedding when I saw a spot of blood that, luckily, lead to nothing worse then having to sit out of the ceremony…

The days turned into a week, and the most excitement I got was being allowed to "rest" in various rooms of the house after it became very clear to everyone but those who'd make my life very annoying if I didn't listen to their pleas that I didn't need to. I'd have preferred to go through the boxes in the attic, dust and clean as need be, cook, the usual, but my assorted family wouldn't have it. I was to rest "for the baby" (a phrase I grew quickly to hate). And if they frowned to find me tucked in blankets, leaning over a few if-they-only-knew-how-Dark tomes and scribbling away madly on a Muggle spiral notebook in the library while Alycone told the humming Paracelsus if he didn't stop messing around with the radio he'd find himself a three-headed toaster, RRUW be damned; or in the parlour with a cuppa and a law book, occasionally frowning and flipping through one of the many reference books pilled on the floor beside me or marking with azure ink in the margins some comment that struck me as important at the time, well, I didn't let it bother me. I might be forced to keep to bed, but hell I wasn't going to lie there and be bored the whole time.

Still, it wasn't so bad. The teasing I could handle, and blushed accordingly. It gave me an excuse, too, to just sit and watch Claudia, not wanting to miss a minute of her life. Every smile, every gurgle, every sleeping breath – those things were precious as gems to me, and I would fight to see her first step, her first day of school, her first beau, her first sigh; her first cold. However, since Dumbledore's death I had slowly come to the realization that I would, in fact, die. Not in the far off sense of "one day, I will die," but in the fact that, come of the end of this year or this month or this century, I would fight Voldemort and I would die. And that was why the idea that I carried life, however small within me, came as such a shock I couldn't process it at first. That was why I wasn't angrier at myself, because I was trying to squeeze a lifetime of living into however many days I had left. I knew if I told them this they would be angry at me, but it was true.

Qualis vita finis ita. Each life has an end that suits it.

Dumbledore was strong, was powerful, was good and kind and the closest thing I've seen to an angel on earth… I had almost hated him when he was alive, could have shouted at him as Maggie had yelled at Brick, "You see, you son of a bitch, you asked too much of people, of me, of him, of all the unlucky damned sons of bitches that happen to love you, and there was a whole pack of them, yes, there was a pack of them besides me and Skipper, you asked to goddamn much of the people that loved you, you – superior creature! – you godlike being!" (I can't help but drawing on other men's words; it is my sin, I know, but …leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise.) When he was alive, it was so easy for me to be angry at him. He wanted the world of me; he wanted me to fight Riddle, the boy he didn't stop when he could have, the boy he'd failed to save exactly as he'd failed to save Draco, when Riddle was probably the best person in the world (better then even Severus, as much as I hated to admit it) to understand what all I'd been through. A cupboard, a hut on a rock, a cat flap, a scar – what were these things to anyone else? Perhaps, because I'd grown up knowing my parents loved me… perhaps, because I had grown up hated… I hadn't turned out like him. But still, I pitied Voldemort.

He should have let me drink the potion in the cave! He should never have saved my life when Draco moved to take it! He asks too much of me even now, from that white tomb on the edge of the lake, where he can never be forgotten! Even if I am ready to take up his mantle, to lead, I didn't want to. He was supposed to stay with me… He was supposed to tell me what to do.

But he'd already done that, hadn't he? In dying for me, he'd shown me the ultimate sacrifice for the second time in my life, and taught me that I didn't need to deserve it to be worthy of it. I'd been right so long ago, Love was Death…

I shouldn't think like this. It really wasn't right to be so obsessed over death. I supposed it came from spending so much time reading books on Dark Arts and death. I couldn't stop, either, and give myself a bit of rest, not while I'd a Horcrux hidden in my vanity and no way to destroy it, a cup and a locket to find, not to mention whatever else Voldemort had made into a Horcrux and Voldemort himself. Unintentionally, I frowned at the book I was reading now – hidden safely in my room, with Claudia down for a nap and most the Order out on their day jobs, I was rereading Stranger in a Strange Land. I knew that, logically, I should probably be reading the serious stuff up here and the Hugo Award winners in their presence, but, in a way, that would be worse. They had to see me working. They had to see I wasn't stopping. I couldn't be the girl I wanted to be before them and was fast becoming what I had not been – and tried to shake such thoughts away.

There came a knock at my door and, hurriedly stuffing the book under my pillow, I called them in, glad for any and every excuse to distract myself these days. Well, it'd only been a week, but bed rest was bed rest and I tired of it quickly. "Come in."

A bushy brown head of hair popped through the door, turning a moment later to reveal Hermione's rich, caramel-coloured eyes searching the room for my presence. Seeing me lying atop the covers, a light coverlet balled into my lap more for a prop while reading then for warmth, with an empty tea cup and half-eaten scone on my nightstand; she frowned a little and pushed the door open wider. Though her jeans would have been considered by Fleur to be a season or two out of style and her tank not nearly as provocative as most the girls our age wore casually, I was struck momentarily by how grown-up she looked. My oldest girl friend, a little older then myself, I shouldn't have been surprised. Not to say she looked liked she'd blossomed overnight or anything physical like that, no, I mean her eyes. They'd been light, before, and gentle. Now they had the same suggestion of having seen too much that so many from the first war had. Acel called it a sign of an old soul; I called it a sign of too long a war. Maybe we were both right.

Behind her, with a tray in hand, was Ron. Good old Ron. He was tall as ever, his firebrand hair still showing signs from its pre-wedding cut, and, though his trousers were rolled up at the cuff in the heat, his shirt seemed a bit too tight, revealing with worn hems that this was not intentional – though, I must add, Hermione seemed rather pleased with the outcome. I could easily imagine what my husband would say, all of which would be far from kind, but would be the kind of humour both of us were guilty of enjoying.

Seeing the smile I did not immediately realize had come onto my face, "That glad to see us? I guess old Snape hasn't been letting you out much," Ron said, delicately for him.

I might have ignored his slight, but Hermione didn't, giving him reproving glance that caused him to play wounded as he leaned back against the bed. "Éléonore needs to keep herself rested, Ron. Your mother only let us up here because we promised to see that she ate." I noticed she didn't admonish him for slighting Severus. If that was a sign of her trying not to fight with Ron about such integral parts of his existence or if she just didn't care for my husband enough that it wasn't worth bothering with formalities over the hols, I didn't know. I didn't much care, either. I loved Severus that was enough for me. Slightly indulgently, Hermione smiled at the two of us.

"So," I asked, trying to keep the conversation away from the reason I 'needed' to keep myself rested in the first place, frankly embarrassed I'd managed to get myself pregnant before I could do any sort of family planning or what you call it, "what've you two been up to?" I considered raising my eyebrows suggestively but thought that mightn't help my own case much as I, quite clearly, had been doing whatever the appropriate Quidditch metaphor was here. Instead, "What's been going on in the real world?" I asked them.

For a moment my mind spun in two very different, very painful directions at those words. Only a year ago, I'd spoken them to the man who was not yet my husband in the place that was no longer my prison. They seemed just as false as they did now, as I lay here in bed while "adults" took in news of the war downstairs. But, also, I'd an image of the white tomb at the water's edge and the wizard within it who I'd loved as a girl loves a grandfather, a student a mentor, a friend a friend filled my mind. And there, in the emerald eye of my mind, with the picture of death's cold end, I knew that, inside, though his magic was strong and men had been embalming their fathers since the dawn of time, the body of the man who'd been Albus Dumbledore was rotting. It might be slow, it might not even be noticeable yet now, only two months since the soul or whatever had put that sparkle in his eyes had fled, but it was happening. Autolysis, distension, putrefaction – these were only fancy words for the decay that was undoubtedly happening beneath the marble-capped tomb. (What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, the smallest sprout shows there is really no death, and if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, and ceas'd the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, and to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.) He was becoming part of the grounds, the atoms that had once bound together to create him separating and joining with others, sharing a little of what he'd once been with the place he loved. Thinking this, it was hard not to think that Life was Love was Death, and I was trying to compress seventeen, eighty, a hundred and thirty years of living into as little time as I'd left.

I noticed then they were waiting for me to comment on something they'd said. "Really?" I choked, figuring it was the best possible non-answer available.

"Yeah," neither seemed to have noticed my momentary lapse in sanity. Claudia was still asleep, Paracelsus curled up beside her, and my friends were here. I could be happy. I could be carefree. I could not think about Voldemort for a while. "Right in his office too." Immediately my ears perked up, trying to catch who they were talking about. Scrimgerour? Were they telling me the Minister of Magic was dead and I was, essentially, in charge of British Wizarding society, even if they didn't know I'd been the one named the DMLE proxy, even if they didn't know Hopkirk was dead? Or was this someone else, another man with an office? Thicknesse? If only we were so lucky. Or-

Hermione continued the dialogue, such as it was. "I overheard Hestia downstairs: it was poison." Poison? Petunia then? But, no, they had said "he" and "office," so it couldn't be her. Who then? "There was a note, too, with the crystallized pineapple."

Wait? But that would mean- "What did it say?" I implored her. If Slughorn had been poisoned… It wasn't exactly Voldemort's style, but I could see why he might want the teacher who'd confirmed for him the existence of Horcruces dead without his name attached to it, so that no one would think to look for the reasoning behind it. I wondered if there were any poisonings of wizards and witches who might have shared more details with young Riddle in his past…

"Nothing really helpful," causally leaning forward to examine the offerings Mrs. Weasley had laid out for me and a smallish-sized army. Picking up half a turkey sandwich, Hermione thrust it into Ron's waiting hands before taking the rest for herself. "Something to the effect of, 'From your favourite student,' or something like that. Everyone knows how Professor Slughorn loves crystallized pineapple, and 'favourite student,' could be any one of the Slug Club…"

Ron made a rude noise at the mention of, well, pretty much everything in the sentence. "Am I the only one who thinks it's a little too lucky that he just happened to have a bezoar handy, and could reach it before the poison set in?"

Bezoar? Then Slughorn wasn't dead? "What poison was in the pineapple? Do you know?"

Hermione did. "La pozione paralizzata."

I frowned and summoned a book of Italianate poisons Severus had been reading the night before – he'd mentioned la vasca fuoco, the "fire-bath," as something he thought might be able to destroy a Horcrux, and easier to contain then an artafyrus – to my hand and searched the index for the paralyzing poison. "Bezoars are expensive," a small one went for a hundred fifty; one that could actually stop a poison of the amount it would take to kill a person was easily twice that. "You would keep them locked up." Severus did. They were locked up in a separate box inside his (locked) potions supply cabinet inside his (locked) office. "Tightly locked up. Hard to get to." Unless you're someone who thinks you're likely to be poisoned – which, when you're a decently paid Potions Master with lots of high and mighty students fawning over you for getting them where they are, you're not likely too – you don't keep a bezoar of that size where just anyone can get it. "So the question is, how fast does la pozione paralizzata take to work?"

Hermione took the text from me, muttering to herself, "Mistletoe… sassafras… germander… pennyroyal… It's all common enough stuff," she spoke louder now, twisting a lock of hair around her finger in frustration. With detached amusement, I saw how Ron watched this and made note to tease them both mercilessly about it later. "Organic, too. I'd say fairly quickly, but that's just a guess."

"Not time to unlock everything then…" I remembered how Dumbledore had found him just a year ago. "He poisoned himself," I announced softly, banishing the book back to its place on the shelves. I remembered too late that my wand was under my pillow with Stranger in a Strange Land, but the book went anyway. No one else seemed to notice this oddity, so intent were they on what I just said.

"What?" asked Ron.

"You don't think…?" Hermione said at the same time.

There was a moment, and then Ron burst out laughing. "Honestly, Ronald, what has gotten into you?" his would-be-girlfriend asked. Frankly, I was curious too. I mean, I knew he disliked Slughorn, but laughing at his self-poisoning…? The noise woke Claudia and, against healer's orders, I got up myself to get her, taking her into my arms and bringing her and a bag of toys to the bed.

"The curse," he said obliquely. "On Defence teachers. Slughorn's going to be in no position to teach next year, so Snape's going to go back to teaching potions," and finding a Potions Master who'd teach was a harder job then finding a DADA teacher with Voldemort's curse on it, "and we'll have another new teacher."

Both of us saw the logic in it, of course, but only Hermione sighed. She may not like Severus all that much, but he'd taught her a lot. Myself, I was overjoyed at the curse I barely remembered hadn't killed, incapacitated, or similar my husband as it had done with all those who'd come before… "I wonder who McGonagall'll find," I mused aloud before the topic, at last, changed to happier things.

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"This is the stupidest, most idiotic, bird-brained, ridiculous, daft, ludicrous, idiotic-"

Evenly, "You said idiotic already, Éléonore."

With a huff, "Well, it's twice as idiotic as anything else I can think of," and continued onwards, "absurd, preposterous, outlandish, nonsensical, outrageous, inane, irrational, foolish, ridiculous, bizarre, unreasonable, ludicrous – I've said ludicrous already, haven't I?" Severus nodded. Alive with nervous energy, I stopped my pacing and took the seat directly across from him. "I don't like this," I told him, wringing my hands; "I don't know why I agreed to this in the first place."

"Because you wanted to confuse the nestlingsss?" Par offered.

Snapping, "You stay out of thisss."

"You asked a question, Mère."

"Oh, go climb a tree!"

Acel was curious when he used his "turn" to respond, "Why would we want to do that?"

I untangled my fingers from each other and flung them in the Runespoor's direction, half-hoping in my anxiety that bolts of lightening would stream from them.

"You woke up, screaming aloud, a prayer from your secret god," Par chose to answer me. My fingers slowly curled in on themselves, making a rough choke-hold shape.

Acel continued, "You feed off our fearsss and hold back your tearsss."

"Oh, shut up!"

"Give usss a tantrum and a know-it-all grin."

"Just when we need one, when the evening'sss thing.

"Hush, you sons-of-a-biscuit you!"

"Oh, you're beautiful, a beautiful fucked-up man."

"You're setting up your razor wire shrine-"

"Hey!" Sus shouted, not at all amused to find that he, along with his brothers, were now being shut inside one of the coffee table drawers.

Answering my earlier statement, Severus continued as if I'd not just hissed an incomprehensible argument to a three-headed snake, "So you don't have to deal with that all day. What was Paracelsus singing, by the way?"

I shrugged, "I'm going to have to break his radio." The pounding in the drawer grew louder at that, but he had to know it was an empty threat, one made several times and never carried out. "After I cripple you for suggesting to McGonagall I do this."

"Only cripple?" he asked mildly, swirling his drink in his hand as if to take in its bouquet. It was only water, but seemed to be a nervous habit of his own, one not often indulged in of late, what for the usual reasons.

"I'm not going to deprive my children of their father. Moody gets on well enough with only one leg and an eye… I'll do it opposite, though, so you can be different."

"How kind of you."

"Which eye is he missing, his left or his right?"

Amusedly, "I don't believe I can recall at the moment."

"Pity."

"Indeed."

I couldn't help it any longer and snorted at our silliness, jumping back out of the chair and beginning to pace in front of the crackling yet cold fireplace. It was oddly strange to be back at Hogwarts knowing Dumbledore wasn't here. Well, he was, but in no way that was useful to anybody. Grass could appreciate what he was now. Me, I could only stare and weep. So many of the others here felt the same way, it was as if a cloak of mourning had descended had settled in the mortar of the stones, pervading every inch of the school until it was not so much as unusual as the way things were. It was my home, as much as any other place in the world was my home, and it offered safety for Claudia and the yet-born "Tertiary Beneficiary" I carried within me. It was a school, yes, and a boarding house and a library and much else besides, but it was primarily a home. Sadness had crept into that home at the loss of its patriarch. Logically I knew Hogwarts had lost many a headmaster and headmistress in its days, but I wondered nonetheless if it had ever lost one who meant quite so much quite this way. I couldn't think of any other heads murdered by one of their own students (and cringed wildly at the memory), but Hermione might. Hogwarts, a History had never interested me.

After a moment, "I thought you wanted be to 'rest,'" I informed him, a unable to stop myself from sounding put out at the two weeks I'd been made, much against my will, to 'relax' and 'enjoy myself.'

"I thought you were tired of resting."

"I thought you didn't care if I was tired of it or not."

"I thought you didn't care what it took, so long as you were allowed to get out of bed."

"If I recall, I there isn't much you actually could do to stop me."

"If I recall, there isn't much you actually did to stop me, either."

"And let you ruin your chance to pretend to be imposing and officious? Never."

"How kind of you."

"What? No comment? No, 'What do you mean, 'pretend,' Éléonore? I am a scary, dominating wizard who always gets my way no matter what?'"

"I'm not going to indulge your juvenile whims by arguing with you."

"'Juvenile?' I do believe that this was your idea in the first place."

"Mine?" he raised his eyebrows in amusement as I balled my fists. "Minerva is headmistress now. I merely offered… a peer recommendation."

"You could have suggested another Potions Master – what about Michelle Mayer? I remember you mentioning her once. Couldn't McGonagall have convinced her to take Slughorn's place?"

A slight crinkle of the nose betrayed his strong emotion, "No."

"Just because she had one idiotic idea that managed to get published in Potions Monthly-"

"It was one idiotic article filled with many idiotic ideas. Besides, she has a pretentious accent that would drive you back to this before the first day was out."

I considered this, then switched arguments. "What about Remus? Could you have convinced him better to come back?"

He seemed torn between wanting to correct my use of the word "you" and explain why, exactly, it was a bad idea to put a werewolf inside a school that was already teetering on the edge of danger. "He wouldn't have wanted to."

"What! You told me you asked everybody else before-"

"Éléonore, you're panicking again."

"Yes. What gave it away, the tone of my voice or the fact that my hands seem to have taken on a life of their own?"

"While your sarcasm is appreciated, now is not the time-"

"If you can't find a time for sarcasm, you obviously aren't looking hard enough. Even the dead have their little jokes."

Setting his glass down, he stood in the same motion and headed to the door of our rooms. "You're impossible to talk to like this."

"I blame you."

"Of course you do." Opening the door, "We should leave before the carriages start to arrive."

"Must we?" Without even looking at him, I grabbed my – Tonks purchased – violently turquoise robes and walked into the hallway. "I suppose, somehow, this could be worse."

"I can think of ways."

"Try me." Surprisingly, he laughed, but said nothing more illuminating then, "I'm sure Minerva will inform you soon enough."

Myself, I pouted on our journey up to the great hall. I'd no reason to pout other then I felt it was the best course of action available for me, and was content to annoy everyone around me because I was bloody annoyed at myself. " Tonks would be better."

"Tonks would have turned half the First Years into various waterfowl before the first week was up."

True. "Sirius?"

"You can't honestly think Black would-"

"No." I sighed again and took the seat proffered for me in the great hall, only dimly appreciating how Severus pulled it out for me before insinuating himself between me and the rather odd Arithmancy professor. "Still, I can not like it, can't I?"

"You thought it was a good idea at the time. Something about making sure your classmates didn't kill themselves battling evil due to the incompetence of-"

"And I'm known for making such excellent choices, am I?" Luckily, the great hall began to fill up with people by this point, even if my mind was filled with various thesauri-worth of words for just how stupid this was. Severus knew how self-conscious I felt about all this, not to mention the fact that I am, once again, two-and-a-half months pregnant (due 23 February this time, a month before Claudia turns one, oh joy of joys), and have recently been named Most Influential Teen Star for the somethingth time in a row, in addition to being Proxy Head of DMLE and all those other annoying things that put me apart from the crowd. How… inside where nothing shows, I am the essence of a man spinning doubled-headed coins, betting against himself in private atonement for an unremembered past… only I remembered most of my sins…

I noticed a few curious glances from my friends and classmates as they entered the great hall, clearly not expecting me to be seated at the head table with my husband. Then again, most of them thought I was crazy for marrying him, or he'd accosted me and got me pregnant and Sirius had made us marry, or something ridiculous along those lines. I didn't really care, but it was kind of annoying to deal with. I put on my best "nothing's wrong" smile and tried not to worry through the sorting and sundry of announcements McGonagall gave. I missed the "Nitwit, blubber, oddment, and tweak," Dumbledore would have brought to the table…

But I refused to let myself think on that. Instead, I waited for what I knew was coming. "…aware that Professor Slughorn became ill over the summer," that was one way to put poisoning yourself to keep away from Voldemort, not that he'd been able to move enough to tell us the truth of it, "and so Professor Snape has chosen to return to his position of Potions Master."

The expected murmurs filled the room. Some eyes, like Hermione's, would be counting the number of chairs at the head table and seeing who was new. Some were, probably, already deducing what my presence at a table otherwise filled with familiar faces would mean.

After a moment of this, the new headmistress continued. "Taking his place as Defence Against the Dark Arts professor will be Éléonore Snape."


	28. In Which the Attack Begins

The universe, I have decided, hates me. Hates me, has sadomasochistic wet dreams of me when she isn't staying up late at night planning ways to make my life miserable – the usual.

I don't honestly know why I agreed to take over Severus's job other then it seemed a good idea at the time. At the time, I was confined to bed rest with the promise that, if I accepted, I'd be allowed to leave my bed for brief periods of class planning, I could have been asked if I wanted to juggle cats and would have answered the affirmative if it got me out of bed.

I resented this baby just a little bit. Claudia I could handle. I loved Claudia. She was an innocent accident, one I could never not enjoy, and perfect with her steel-grey eyes and dark black hair. She could be my one innocent mistake, my one happy accident. My "Tertiary Beneficiary" I couldn't help but feel some anger towards. Having to rest and leave HQ un-cleaned. No Quidditch. Again. A whole bunch of stupid reasons I didn't want to even be thinking ran through my mind and repeated themselves over and over again. It wasn't right it wasn't fair didn't I deserve to be able to love and fly and go to school and play games and go about as a seventeen year old girl was supposed to. You weren't supposed to be having babies at seventeen despite the fact your body can do it. Especially not your second one. I think I read somewhere it screws both of you up – psychologically, that is.

Groaning internally at my thoughts, I rummaged in my bag. Syllabi, check. Ink bottle, extra quills, parchment, check. Books for Charms after, check. Law book for boredom, reading book for amusement, Dark Arts book on destroying things completely for research, check. Mascara, fold-up-brush thingy, lip gloss, check. Where was that stupid thing? I drew a plastic cigarette lighter from my mess of belongings and set it on the desk. My desk. Severus's desk, before. Umbridge's before then. Before it was fake Moody's. And Remus's. And Lockhart's. And Quirrel's. And Harper's. And Grimes'. Fitzpatrick's. Strangeglove's. McNamee's. Rodgers'. Soxael's. Witney's. I wanted to hide under the desk, a little child for once. After all these years waiting to be grown up, I found I really didn't care for it much. It was all, "Oh, Éléonore, take over the British Wizarding government for us, won't you?" and "Oh, Éléonore, we simply must visit your dear aunt Petunia with phials of the most deadly poisons known to Wizarding and Runespoor kind in our pockets," and "Éléonore, please take over this class for me, we've worked it out so you can keep going to Charms and Transfiguration and the lecture part of Potions; isn't it just wonderful and convenient and handy that you just so happened, in part with my urging, to take your DADA NEWT last term, almost like I was planning this all along…"

Not that I thought he honestly thought Slughorn would poison himself intentionally and "force" him into going back to being school Potions Master. But, still… I think there are fewer conspiracy theories about JFK or the Skull and Bones society floating about then I'd thought up on my own since they "asked" me to be the next DADA professor.

An eyeglass screwdriver and my wand in hand, I try to take the lighter apart without burning down the school in the process, which, knowing my luck is a distinct possibility. I'd just charmed a magnifying glass and a flashlight float over my workspace when I realized the sounds I heard around me was not the muffled hissing of Paracelsus playing with his gnome statuette in my pocket but my first class shuffling in from the hall. The new Gryffindor and Slytherin Firsties. Great. I gave one of the first to arrive – a boy with floppy, dishwater hair that I first thought was a midget until I looked at the others around him and determined he was, in fact, above average height for his age – a discomfited smile and quickly stuffed the screwdriver, magnifying glass, and pieces of the lighter into the top drawer.

Once they were all assembled, all twenty-six of them, I waved my wand to close the far door. A few looked bored – Wizarding households, I instantly knew – while others were more obviously interested and, of those, the majority were probably Muggle-borns. Five, I thought. There might have been more, but they were dead now, their bodies returning to the earth. In the end, we all must return to the earth from which we came. A fury was reborn in me at that, one I remembered every time I looked at the entrance hall and saw bloodstains that were no longer there or went near a stair that led to the top of the Astronomy Tower…. And I began to talk.

Quiet, like McGonagall had been quiet my first day, like Severus had been quiet – authoritarian, listen-to-what-I'm-saying, but no so sharp as to scare these children I was only six years older then. I was probably more scared of them, with their quills unlinked on their desks and books not taken out, then they were of me. "The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently;," I began, running with an idea that had just popped into my brain other then the my-name's-Éléonore-Snape,-yes-I'm-a-student-still-but-I'll-be-taking-the-DADA-classes-this-year speech I'd been working over in my head before becoming distracted by the Zippo, "but he is wiling, in great crises, to give even his life — knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live."

I looked at them, these fifty-two unwavering eyes trained upon me. Some where blue, others hazel, and more still murky pools of dark brown, but none of them blinked. I tried not to shutter as my heart, already working for two, grew tighter in my chest. Light-headed and mildly ill, I remained seated behind the heavy, Resolute-Desk-esque, er, desk. "Aristotle said that, a long time ago – to warn you now, half the things I say shall ring of someone else's words – but his words are as true now as they were then.

"I want to tell you in fancy words and powerful phrases just what is going on in the world. I want to tell you that you are safe from the war that rages outside of Hogwarts while inside school grounds. I want to tell you, in all truthfulness, that while the world has plunged into shadow and the nightmares devils and demons would not speak of on dark nights, a light remains lit here, a beacon of hope in the approaching night. I want to tell you all this with all my heart, but the fact remains that I cannot, for there is a war going on in our world, a war that the previous headmaster of this school – a man I'm sorry to say you'll never know – died for. War does not kindly stop its march at school boundaries. You will see your classmates take sides in a battle they should not have to fight. You will hear tales of battles that were, and battles that will be. You will, most likely, see one with your own eyes before the year is up.

"I don't say this to scare you. I say this because I want you to know the truth. I don't want you to hear from second-hand sources things that you deserve to know. So I will tell you this:

"There is a monster out there who was once a man. His name, though you won't hear it spoken often, is Voldemort." A few, those I suspected were wizard-raised, shuddered at the name. Only the Muggle-borns had the privilege of looking at me with wide, confused but far from frightened eyes. "The only thing he craves more then immortality is the eradication of Muggles and Muggle-borns. There are those who agree with him, of course, just as there are those who fight against him. Hogwarts is a bastion for those such as that – the Rebellion, if you will." I laughed a little at that, remembering that all it took was the death of Scrimgouer for me to be, legally, of the Rebellion that I had already inherited. "And, for that reason, Death Eaters broke into the school last June."

I didn't know how to continue. So I didn't, letting the silence overcome me for a moment before remembering I couldn't drift off in my thoughts, not here, not when I was supposed to be teaching. "So," I found words at last, "when I tell you to take my class seriously, I mean for you to take it seriously. You will be on time to class, respectful to your fellow students, and do your assignments even if they're late." I stood up then and pulled the syllabi from my bag. Handing them to the tall-for-his-age blonde to pass out, I returned to my desk, sitting cross-legged atop it now.

"Enough with the melodramatics, though. I might as well introduce myself. I am Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Snape, but for practical reasons you can just call me Éléonore, or Ely if you're daring. I don't much care. Anything but 'Professor Snape,' please. I'm still one of you." Curiosity began to peak on the pale faces of the children around me. "I just turned seventeen a month ago; am, technically, a member of Gryffindor house; and will still be taking a couple of classes this year. That being said," I hedged, "there are probably some things you should know about me. Let's see… I've been married for about a year now to the man who you have to call Professor Snape, who'll be your Potions Master… I've a five month old daughter, Claudia-Éléonore, who you'll probably run into if you come to see me after class… I also have a Runespoor – a three-headed snake – name Paracelsus who'll probably be sitting in most the time, unless his radio distracts him, but he's mostly harmless… Oh, and don't believe anything the newspapers say about me. If you've any questions about me, you can ask them today and today only.

For the moment, though, the class seemed to be too bewildered at my sudden shift in moods to honestly think of any questions at the moment, but I knew they would come. Until then I did the best I could and clapped my hand together and delved in. "So, by now you're asking yourselves what we'll actually be learning in Defence, I'm sure…"

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I feel like the victim of a botched decapitation. You know the weird, notched joint I know there's a name for? The one in the skull where it joins with the spinal cord? Right now it's on strike, not wanting to join anything together, 'cause my brain just feels a bit too heavy for normal and my neck really, really, doesn't want to have to do anything at the moment except be decapitated, because it might be a fun alternative to this unique and most unwarranted pain. Foramen magnum, that's what it was. Can a hole in a bone be bruised?

Merlin, I hate fifteen-year-olds. I hate the memory of myself as a fifteen-year-old. No, let's broaden the whole spectrum of people-I-can-do-without-having-to-deal-with to teenagers in general. So bloody annoying, what with their hormones and their dirty minds and I-know-more-then-you,-so-ha-ness. Yes, I do realize I'm a teenager too, but, Gods, I think I might strangle my OWL students before the year is up. No, worse, transfigure them all into snakes and make them listen to Paracelsus for an hour!

I sat in the shower as best I could, imagining I was beneath a nice, warm waterfall that could drown out the memory Belial's minions making not-so-subtle suggestions about you-guess-what. Some of them made even me blush, and I've done some of the things they mentioned… not, of course, that I'd ever tell them that…

"Mère, you've been in there."

"For an hour."

"Did you drown?"

"Yessss," I shouted back, turning up the radio and groaning over the announcement that the song they were about to play had been written by The Haz-Mat's lead singer, Osiris O'Malley, after I'd broken up with him two years ago. I was going to have to write these people and tell them if they didn't stop saying that I would pull entrails out through their eye sockets or something like that.

Merlin, that was a lovely visual. Nice to know teaching brings out the homicidal maniac in me. The Board of Governors is so going to love that.

…And indeed there will be time for the yellow smoke that slides along the street, rubbing its back upon the window-panes; there will be time, there will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; there will be time to murder and create, and time for all the works and days of hands that lift and drop a question on your plate; time for you and time for me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions, before the taking of a toast and tea…

I leaned back, resting my aching head on the edge of the tub, groaning at the pain that was radiating down my back… A careless wave of my wandless hand changed the radio to CD mode, hoping to find something that would knock TS Eliot and his rather unhelpful words, for the moment, from my head.

Ah, the familiar cello, the violin… "I must not commit unnecessary murders…" I mumbled to myself and, to my extreme mortification, fell asleep beneath the warm, comforting spray.

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I woke up sometime later wrapped only in a towel, feeling my hair damp and heavy around me. My skin was alive with the divine feeling of air-drying, making me feel still immersed in the heavenly waters. Dimly I recognized the weight on my hip, my belly, as Severus's hands; that I was half in his arms, though he was still sound asleep. It must have been very late, but I couldn't bring myself to feel anything other then a warm, damp contentment.

Leaning my head back against Severus's chest, I did the only thing that seemed natural and kissed the first readily available part of him – his chin – and traced his jaw line with slow, instinctual movements. In sleepy response, a hand made its way up my torso, warm, callused fingers stopping at the skin just above the towel wrapped loosely about me and moving in small, probing movements that send tingles through every inch of me. I shifted yet again, this time to reach his mouth, causing his hand to be pinned against me in a very nice way.

I found it endlessly funny that, try as hard as he might, he couldn't hide his emotions anymore. Not from me. I knew him too well. Little things like saving me from drowning in the bathtub and falling asleep while holding me gave him all to much away. If he woke up and realized what… advantage… I was taking of him now, well, he probably wouldn't find that as funny as I did. Even if he did enjoy it too.

Taking in his breath as he (with a noise partway between a sigh and a groan) exhaled into my mouth; I tangled my fingers into his hair and raided the aperture now open beneath me. My other hand clutched his shoulder, fingers curling with pleasure as, still half-asleep, his body reacted to mine. His right, smashed against my breast, fought for a better position while the other, enraptured as it was with the details of my tattooed hip and thigh, did nothing to stop me from trying to press myself further against him.

I knew Severus was awake when his movements became more desperate – sex, with us, always seemed to have the "tomorrow you will die" part of "eat, drink, and be merry," even in our most reserved moments, – moving with a plan. Touch here, stroke there, press, tweak, grasp, grip, feel…

Oh god the feel, fingers digging in, the overpowering need…

The words: "Don't want to hurt you."

"I want you so badly."

"The baby-"

"I want you."

"Hurt-"

"I need-"

"I-"

I didn't care, but he did, and I couldn't make him not care. But God it felt good at least to be close to him, bodies moving… that was enough.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

The night couldn't end well, though. That was something that could never be.

I was unable to fall asleep after, possibly because I'd dozed the afternoon away and quickly got tired of listening to the clock count out the seconds, my thoughts unclear but incessant as they thrummed a steady beat in my head. I felt like I was going insane.

"I have a problem, Severus," I heard his familiar voice softly hiss in my latest dream, the monster's face pallid but slightly alive with excitement or, if not more alive, then at least less dead then usual. His eyes, like broken rubies, glinted slightly.

Then, my stomach seeming to fall to my knees, I heard two words I'd never wished to hear uttered from that (perfect) mouth again, "My Lord?"

Razing his hand, as if it were a delicate baton of glass rather then a grey-wooded wand with pitted nodules of bark remaining at its handle he held, Voldemort illustrated for Severus. Or, rather, the man that was Severus in this alternate, analogue universe, in which the "Chosen One" not me but some other me-that-was-not-me, a boy of all things. "Why doesn't it work for me, Severus?" Even in my dream, I think I shuddered violently at the name passing from Voldemort's lipless, serpentine mouth. I might even have snarled a bit, whatever part inside of me that had called Niynhi the Jaguar to protect me coming to life in my anger.

With blankness that had, for once, nothing to do with practice, "My – my Lord? I do not understand. You – you have preformed extraordinary magic with that wand." I'm sure of it. Even if it wasn't the dark yew-and-Fawkes-feather creation Wormtail had returned to him the night of his rebirth, the only wizard in the word to ever out-battle The Dark Lord was Dumbledore, who was dead because of a spell a schoolboy had cast. That must really irk Voldemort… Still, Dumbledore was the only one who could walk away from his former pupil. They said I was strong, but I had never done half the things that he could easily do. Besides, if this wand wasn't working for him, another could easily be found…

"No. I have preformed my usual magic. I am extraordinary, but this wand… no. It has not revealed the wonders it has promised. I feel no difference between this wand and the one that I procured from Ollivander all those years ago… No difference." Frankly, I don't know what he was expecting. A wand was a wand was a wand. My holly-and-Fawkes-feather works well for me, just as Hermione's vine-wood-and-dragon-heartstring worked well for her and Ron's ash-and-unicorn-hair for him. We could exchange our wands if we liked and could cast fairly well with any of the lot, but just because I might be waving another's wand about doesn't mean I'll miraculously gain Hermione's skill with fire spells or anything. Idiot. "I have thought long and hard, Severus…" my eventual murderer or victim continued, "Do you know why I have called you back from the battle?"

Severus's eyes remained coolly fixed on the coiled python before him. "No, my Lord," he said with applaudable aplomb under the circumstances, "but I beg you will let me return. Let me find Potter."

In this universe, Severus was obviously not my husband or the father of children that didn't exist here. He was, quite possibly, the evil he had shunned long before in my world. I didn't know what he wanted with this Harry-that-wasn't-quite-me, but I didn't like it.

"You sound like Lucius. Neither of you understands Potter as I do. He does not need finding. Potter will come to me. I know his weakness, you see, his one great flaw. He will hate watching the others struck down around him, knowing that it is for him that it happens. He will want to stop it at any cost. He will come."

"But my Lord, he might be killed accidentally by one other than yourself-"

"My instructions to my Death Eaters have been perfectly clear. Capture Potter. Kill his friends – the more, the better – but do not kill him…" I did not, not even for this evil-not-Severus before me, like the turn of voice Voldemort, this remaining seventh or sixty-fourth or whatever of Tom Riddle's soul, took next. "But it is of you that I wished to speak, Severus, not Harry Potter. You have been very valuable to me. Very valuable."

I'd never heard Severus sound so… weak in his life. "My Lord knows I seek only to serve him. But – let me go and find the boy, my Lord. Let me bring him to you. I know I can-"

"I have told you no!" he shouted, his voice such a loud, hissing shriek it hurt my dream-ears. "My concern at the moment, Severus, is what will happen when I finally meet the boy."

"My Lord, there can be no question, surely-?" but I knew Severus, my Severus, well enough to know this one felt there was a question and rather hoped for it. I hoped Voldemort did not see. He might not be my husband, he might not be anything to this-universe-me, but I couldn't stand to see anything happen to him. Not when Claudia-Éléonore, in my universe, was sleeping not feet from where I surely still lay and, inside me, little Julien-Sévères or Henri-Auguste or Julia-Alexandrie or whatever I would choose to call him/her grew. Nothing could happen to their father, not if I could stop it, not if the man wasn't even, technically, the man that fathered them. Chalk it up to my "saving people thing" or whatnot, but I couldn't… I don't know what I might do if I had to go on, in any reality, without him…

"-but there is a question, Severus. There is." I wished Voldemort would stop saying his name. This wasn't my Severus – he shouldn't be called by the same name, not at all. Fingers caressing the strangely familiar wand in his hand, "Why did both the wands I have used fail when directed at Harry Potter?"

"I- I cannot answer that, my Lord." My Severus knew of the Fawkes feather cores both our wands shared. Maybe this one didn't, but I doubted it. Severus, no matter what reality he was in, always knew everything. He was voracious for knowledge and, through his spy work, a natural at ferreting out secrets; I didn't see how any Severus in whatever universe mightn't know.

Voldemort knew this too, and with quiet rage asked, "Can't you?" I felt angry too, for no reason I could name, and tried to contain the wave of nausea that rolled over me… This isn't good, my mind started repeating, growing gradually louder and louder, you've got to stop this… I chalked it up to seeing a man who, in a different universe then this one, was my husband being so obviously in danger. Yes, that had to be it… "My wand of yew did everything of which I asked it, Severus, except to kill Harry Potter. Twice it failed. Ollivander told me under torture of the twin cores, told me to take another's wand. I did so, but Lucius's wand shattered upon meeting Potter's."

Trying admirably not to stutter – a sign greater then any I knew that, as he spoke, Voldemort was tearing down this Severus's mental barriers and seeing the truth there that, most probably, ran something along the line of my Severus's – "I – I have no explanation, my Lord."

"I sought a third wand, Severus. The Elder Wand, the Wand of Destiny, the Deathstick. I took it from its previous master. I took it from the grave of Albus Dumbledore… All this night, when I am on the brink of victory, I have sat here wondering, wondering, why the Elder Wand refuses to be what it out to be, refuses to perform as legend says it must perform for its rightful owner… and I think I have the answer… Perhaps you already know it? You are a clever man, after all, Severus. You have been a good and faithful servant."

This Severus already knew what was coming, and, though I could hear my Severus saying to me in memory Socrates' words, "Death is one of two things… either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything, or, as we are told, it is really a change: a migration of the soul from one place to another," as way of felling me he was not afraid, I knew he was afraid. Maybe Voldemort could sense it. I do not know, though I doubted that any but the two of us could ever tell. "My Lord-" he tried quickly.

"The Elder Wand cannot serve me properly, Severus, because I am not its true master. The Elder Wand belongs to the wizard who killed its last owner. You killed Albus Dumbledore," (not Draco, then, in this universe? Was this Severus evil? Was-?") "While you live, Severus, the Elder Wand cannot be truly mine."

And then I watched helplessly as he ordered the replicate of my love to die.

I knew it was not natural to dream of alternate universes. Especially ones where I was a boy instead of a girl. I mean, ew, gross! But, seriously, there had to be something wrong with me. I'd spent one restless night a week previous sitting in the library flipping through a dictionary of mental illnesses… Capgras Delusion?No, it was the details of the universe that were replaced, not the people… Gender Identity Disorder? No, it was only in my dream I felt anything other then female… Reduplicative Paramnesia? Nothing sounded right… maybe I was just neurotic…

Magic was magic, though, and so I could count nothing out – including the possibility that, somewhere, an analogous reality existed, the only difference being that, in it, I was a boy, and all the differences between my universe and "his" was spun from that. Obviously, in that universe, I'd never fallen in love with Severus and vice versa, but Dumbledore still had died, though it was that Severus who killed him there. What else was different? What else the same? I'd seen the diadem in that universe, and it existed in mine too, but that had happened before I was born, presumably, so there was nothing to change there…

Life was just so much easier, you know, back in that cupboard-under-the-stairs. I'd only one goal then: survive until I was old enough to get out. I didn't have five different worlds and things pulling me in different directions. I know I'd practically begged for the freedom that I had now. I'd relished, at first, being able sleep when I liked and eat what I liked and generally not be beholden to anyone or anything but the basic rules of Hogwarts that I'd have followed anyway because, generally, they were pretty good ideas. I'd figured it out once that there was a period from after my last class on a Friday (as dinner on Friday nights didn't require our presence) until first period on Monday (as breakfast was always optional, as were meals on weekends, though generally people rarely missed them, if only because the only other food options were what could be owled in from the parents or smuggled up from Hogsmeade) when I'd never have to see an adult if I didn't want to. Like two-and-a-half days worth of time when I was in control of everything and, if I didn't want to change out of my pyjamas or sit for hours by the lake, there was no one to tell me I couldn't but my own common sense. I'd revelled in those moments.

But those moments came with a price. Wife, mother, student, teacher, hero, solider, Minister, daughter, friend – all these things tugged at me, fighting for control. And there wasn't anyone who could define with rigidity my roles anymore… I couldn't just listen and say that, from eight o'clock in the morning to five at night I was a student, and from five to eight I was something else, and from midnight to six it didn't matter what I was because that's when I was to sleep. I wanted rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty, and areas where I could be certain, yes, I was doing the right thing.

How could I be a mother, though, when what little part of my days weren't spent teaching were spent in class or doing other education-related things? How could I be a wife when my husband's days were so similarly occupied? And what of the war? How could I lead it from Hogwarts without neglecting the school? How could I fight if I was leading others? How could I lead the government as a war hero – as a young woman – as a murderess – as a non-political animal, who shunned all things ministry and devoted time instead to law and tragedies? I don't think anyone ever understood just how hard it was, to figure out when you were supposed to be what…

I found myself wondering outside of Dumble- no, McGonagall's office. If I could go up, maybe, and speak with his portrait… But I didn't. I roamed instead the ground floor, forcing myself not to think of dead men.

Instead I wondered why something called "The Elder Wand" might sound familiar. Could it simply be Voldemort was noting the difference, his old was made of yew, this one of elder wood? Or was it "elder" in the way it was older then his old wand? Or-

God, I was hungry. Skipping out on dinner and being to spazz-y to eat a thing was not a good idea. Only pausing to insure I'd remembered to put on proper clothes for visiting the house elves in the middle of the night – and mildly amused at myself for having put on a combination that only Tonks would consider sedate: red-and-blue pinstriped skirt, tank top, and mercilessly red robe, – I headed for the kitchens, wondering how I could convince the house elves to make pizza at one in the morning.

The halls were silent. No one was up but me, at least not in this part of the castle, and it made everything seem silent and ethereal. I couldn't help but wonder how often Dumbledore had done this, or Severus in the years before I'd met him. How often I'd do this again, wondering and worrying about things I could not change…

What was this "Elder Wand," this "Wand of Destiny"? Why would Voldemort be interested in such a pretentiously named wand, one that would make an evil mastermind even more powerful then he already was? Why did I dream of it? Why did I keep dreaming of this strange world?

Why did I dream of Severus's death?

I was going absolutely mental. That was the only explanation. That the pressure had gotten to me at last, and I was creating new things to go mad over. Weren't Horcruces enough? They'd been enough for Rasputin and Méléagre. What did it say of Voldemort that he so wanted to triumph over death he kept on searching for more and more ways to protect himself? Well, remarkably smart not to put all his eggs in one basket, yes, but still. He was a brilliant wizard. He needn't have tried to steal Flamel's Stone, not when, once reborn, he could have striven to create a Philosopher's Stone for himself… I didn't even know if there was such a thing as the "Elder Wand" or if Voldemort was going after it in anything other then my bizarre dreams….

"Mistress Éléonore Snape ma'am," said a house elf coming up to me nervously. He didn't have another pizza in his hands, so I assumed he was expecting me to homicidally disappoint from the way he was wringing his tiny, withered hands.

"Yes, Verney?"

The house elf flushed a faint purple at this. Most people didn't remember house elves, let alone their names, but I'd spent a lot of times in the kitchens for the obvious reasons. Nervously, "Cobby is here, ma'am, and Verney doesn't know what to do."

"Cobby?" I asked uncertain. MaybeI didn't know all the house elves in Hogwarts…

"Cobby is Rufus Scrimgouer sir's elf-" That was enough, though, and I waved at Verney to bring the elf to me. My mind was already running: why would the Minister's elf come to Hogwarts of all places?

My mind went blank for one very long, very still moment, in which the only clear sound that came to my ears was not that of Cobby, explaining how Jasey had seen the Death Eaters come into the Minister's apartment and try to hold them off, but there were too many and told him to go get help and how Hogwarts was the only place he knew to go and how he couldn't "feel" Jasey or Scrimgouer at all and how they had to be dead and he didn't know what he'd do; no, the one thing I heard with any clarity was the radio about midway down the table at which I sat, playing WNN's Albert and Thoth in the Mornings. They were debating the artistic merits of Some Kind of Desperate Feeling's new single "Diligent Vainglory." I barely understood the words Cobby was saying but could hear every word the radio was giving out, as if it were the one intensely real thing in the world and everything else – myself, Hogwarts, the house elves and the news they were bringing me – weren't quite even ghosts, but something less than that – a dream, maybe, of a world that never was. It was something utterly meaningful and full of life, and that the war and the school and the deaths were part of its existence, and I was just a shadow that had never touched anything, though I had touched it all…

And then it hit me.

Dumbledore was dead: The Order answered to me.

The Minister was dead, or close to it: I was, nominally, in charge of the British Wizarding government.

Slowly, the room came to life around me, and I could hear the sounds of pots and pans clanking, rolling pins moving against counters, house elves chattering to each other in squeaky little voices that merged together into a low drone of emotion… after a moment, I realized that my lips were moving, my tongue brushing against my teeth and the roof of my mouth in such a way that strange, strangled sounds were coming out. They didn't make sense to me at first – was it Gobbledegook for all I knew, or maybe some form of Gnomish – but, after several more of those strained, syllabic sounds fell from my frozen lips, I came to realize I was giving orders, making requests; asking for writing supplies, floo powder, and a strong cup of tea. "…go to McGonagall, tell her what's going on and to insure the castle defences are up. Zloty, go to Severus, tell him where I am and send him to McGonagall. Yabby, if you'd do the same for Flitwick?"

Before you could name it, all I asked for arrived on neat little silver trays with little lace doilies underneath everything. Ignoring the parchment for the moment, I went to the fire they told me was connected to the floo and called HQ, praying to every deity that ever existed that I wasn't too late. "Operator?" I asked while trying to make sense of the jumble of feet I saw from my lowly, fireplace-level vantage point. Louder, "Operator?" I called, though still no answer came, a several voices continued talking in quick, rushed tones. Battle preparations, safe houses, healers that were sympathetic to our causes – all of this and more rushed around me, frantic whispers and worried calls that were more reminiscent of preparation for a Quidditch match that everyone knew would end badly then battle. But my ideas of what preparation for a battle might look like were probably unduly influenced by what episodes of Star Trek Hermione had insisted I watch, wherein the crew just teleports down – with their captain, of course – shoots a few laser beams that always hit while being shot at by beams that nearly always miss, and, if you're lucky, end in the moral of the story being carefully explained before the ship warps off into the distance. I never thought that HQ would ever look anything like that, but I think some part of me expected it to. It would make this less real, the assassination of the Minister less real. I didn't even know if the new Muggle Prime Minister knew about magic, let alone the war, and I was going to have to see that somebody – probably a human, not an elf, for his sanity – to make sure the Death Eater's didn't this man who'd been in office… I dunno, four moths? I remember Dumbledore saying something about him… What party he was in, maybe? I'd have to research that, whenever I found the time to see him… If the country was at war, somebody probably had to tell the man in charge of the Muggles, and it probably should be me…

Realizing we were kinda busy here, I shouted, my head bobbing the emerald flames I could see just out of the corner of my eye, "Hey! Guys! Down here!" Half a dozen bodies moved down to my level, so I could see not only Sirius, Tonks and Remus (who I expected, because they lived full-time at the house) but Ari, Shacklebolt, and Ari's assistant Victor Talbot.

Victor was the first to speak, looking surprisingly glum as he said, "You're the youngest Minister of Magic. Ever. Anywhere."

Surprisingly, I found myself giggling. Stress. It must be stress. "I burst your bubble, Victor?"

Wrinkling his nose at me, he answered distastefully. "No. My brother, Richard, might try to murder you, though, so keep an eye out."

I snorted at him, then turned to Shacklebolt, "I've Scrimgouer's elf Cobby here saying that his master's already dead, so don't bother sending anyone after him."

"Merlin!" was the most PG of all curses they let loose.

"Yeah, that was my general reaction. How many people do you have at HQ?"

"About twenty, and Pye with whomever he's managed to wrangle together at St. Mungo's."

"Okay, here's what I want you guys to do. Sirius, Remus? You too take half of who you have and go to St. Mungo's. Do everything in your power to keep from closing, no matter what. Lock down all but the main floo, and go room by room through the hospital checking arms if you have to. Any Death Eaters you find stun them for now and break their wands. Just keep it open, okay?"

My adoptive father nodded and I could hear him in the background, being even now a tease, "Okay, folks, I've just been informed Minister Rufies is kaput, so here's the new plan…"

Trying not to comment on Scrimgouer's new nicknames, I closed my eyes before continuing, "Kingsley, take the rest – hopefully as many Ministry people as you can – and head to the MoM. Take anything important – files, paintings, whatever you think's necessary to take, you'd know better then me – and destroy anything that shouldn't fall into, the like. Oh, and see if you can get one of those seals with the big "M" on them? I've some letters I need to send and it'd be best if I make it as official as possible. Send everything to HQ or Hogwarts, via the kitchens. Head to St. Mungo's when you're done. "

"Aye, milady," he agreed, and calmly pulled Tonks away to start preparation.

Ari spoke up then, eyes seeming alive for the first time in ages, "I get to play 'Operator,' so I'll keep you up to date – unless you want to floo through?"

I shook my head, spat out the ashes that got into my mouth when I did so, then, when she was done laughing at me, "I'm staying at Hogwarts. Couldn't sleep, wound up in the kitchens, and now am setting up my Government-in-Exile amongst bowls of fruit and Belgian waffles. Oh, and since I need a proxy to take over for me as proxy Head of DMLE, could you do the paperwork and put your name on it – don't look at me like that, you're the best lawyer I know. Remember, keep me informed. I'll send someone to keep an eye on the Muggle Prime Minister and have to start my letter writing campaign to convince the rest of the world that Voldemort is not in charge of things and should not be supported…" I heard something that didn't sound like house elves behind me and said, "Gotta go," to Ari as I pulled my head out of the fire.

Hands grabbed me as I fell backwards, my ability to travel by any means no helped at all by the awkward angle floo calls force on the neck. Instantly, the blue light that sometimes overcame me surround me, but didn't sting the hands that touch me. I about cried out, but the hands I felt were familiar and warm, and when I turned the light disappeared altogether. "Severus," I cried, "what're you doing here?"

"The elf-"

"I know that, but I thought I asked Zloty to send you to McGonagall."

"He did," my husband said, pulling me to the table where, indeed, fruit plates and waffles amidst the writing supplies I'd been delivered and pot of strong English tea. "I thought I should come down and see you first."

He pushed me down onto the bench and handed me a cuppa. "I couldn't sleep," I told him, feeling the heat rise to my fate as he looked at me in a way that said, "Oh, really?" Containing the blush as best I could, I continued. "Well, not for long. Then I got hungry and, well, the long and short of it is I've sent the Order to break-and-enter the MoM… Want to head to Downing Street and make sure none of your old school chums try to massacre the Muggle Minister?"

He looked at me askance, as if next I'd ask if he wanted to go around in one of my uniforms for the day, before catching himself and pouring himself a cup.

I couldn't help myself and giggled, briefly leaning my head against his shoulder before pulling away and taking up a quill. What was the best way to address a letter to the head of a government your adoptive father had tried to forcibly marry you to a year or two earlier? Dear Your Majesty, I'm sorry I have written earlier to apologize for my father's behaviour, but now I have a favour to ask you… "How do you address the head of le Royaume de Français de Magicien? I think its something like, Louis XX, par la grâce de Dieu, roi de France et de Navarre, Duc d'Anjou, de Bourbon, et de Touraine, but that's just cobbling together what I remember what they called The Sun King and what I know of Louis Alphonse. Would it be better to call him Louis Alphonse? Should I apologize for Sirius?"

"Constantly."

"Seriously, though, how do you write to the various leaders of the free Wizarding world and tell them that, while I know that a sociopathic psychopath has murdered the head of our government and will, in all likelihood, seize control of the country in a way that we're unlikely to be able to do with our rag-tag bunch of vigilantes. I don't even know how long we'll be able to hold St. Mungo's, if it at all. And asking for French or Austro-Hungarian Aurors to come help us, or, God-forbid, hiring PMCs…" I leaned my head on his shoulder again and sighed.

Setting his cup down, he wrapped his arms around me. I half thought they were trembling, but couldn't honestly believe he'd let even me see how scared he might be. He had personally seen this monster in action. He knew what he could do. And it was a lot worse then simple murder. "It'll be alright, Éléonore."

"You don't seriously believe that."

"No, I don't."

"It's going to end badly, isn't it?"

"Probably."

"And more people will have to die."

He was silent, but held me tighter. The clawing, cloying feel of bile rose in my throat; I felt too warm from too little sleep and strong tea. There was something in me trembling at the thought of what was surely going on around me. Yes, I granted them, I was seventeen-years-old and two-and-a-half months pregnant, but I could fight… I should fight… I should face down Voldemort, like he wanted… But I couldn't, because I was busy setting up a war room in a school kitchen, and trying to find the cup and the real locket and whatever else Riddle might have placed his soul in, and trying to figure out how you destroy soul-fragments without Basilisk venom…

"Promise me you won't die?"

"Everyone has to die, eventually. That's why we're fighting this war. It could've just as easily been purebloods he hated, or Anglicans, or the French. The Dark Lord allowed his fear to take whatever vehicle was necessary to insure that death never found him."

"Well then, I want you to die old in bed beside me. Promise me that."

"I'll do my best. Do you still want me to see the Muggle Prime Minister lives through the night?"

"Would you? Hopefully by morning Shacklebolt will be done ransacking the MoM and one of his folks can take over then, before classes." I groaned, remembering I'd two double periods tomorrow – NEWT classes both; the Sixth Years in the morning and the Seventh in the afternoon – and groaned more deeply remembering Severus had both his First Year classes tomorrow amongst his others, and a sleep-deprived Severus was not going to make a good impression on those poor, innocent children. "Sonsy, go with Severus, will you? Stay out of sight, but nearby in case I need to get a message to him?"

"Sonsy will keep Professor Snape sir out safe, Mistress Éléonore Snape ma'am. Sonsy promises." I let loose a true grin at the idea of tiny, blow-away-in-the-next-good-wind, keeping Severus safe in a way my husband couldn't keep himself.

Joining his sigh with a noise of distaste, Severus extracted himself from me and stood to leave. "If I don't return, assume I expired of boredom."

"He's a Muggle, not a fish. I'm sure you can find something to keep yourself occupied." And with that, I turned to the parchment and began writing:

Votre Majesté, I had wished to introduce myself

under better circumstances, but I think it

best to get to the point of things. This morning…

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I was fiddling, bleary-eyed, with what looked like a perfectly normal eraser in my classroom amongst the various Larger-Then-Life Luggage (WWW patent 198-387-GF-389) scattered about the front of the room. The paintings, un-shrunk and leaning in large piles against the stairs to my office, I could understand. The letterhead-charmer, stacks of files, and bags of artefacts, I could understand. The eraser, I couldn't.

Perhaps I was staring at it too hard, but I didn't notice the door open or Ginny come skipping into the room. When she asked, "What y'doing, Ely?" I about jumped out of my chair and hexed her to small, indefinable bits.

"Herne and Hecate! Are you trying to get yourself killed?" I swore, adding a bit of Parseltongue in for good measure.

"Er, no? I wasn't hungry this morning and thought I'd come hang out here, give you moral support and all. We didn't see you at dinner and assumed that you were trying to find a way to get out of this…" she waved vaguely in my direction, plopping her bag down on a second row desk and riffling through it for something that later turned out to be a packet of Mammoth Mint Chewing Gum. "Hermione would be up here, convincing you to stick it out, that you made a commitment and all that, but you know how she is about breakfast," (here she adopted a tone that wouldn't be out of place on our dear bookworm), "It's the most important meal of the day, and if you don't eat all your veg and have a proper serving of milk or milk-product, you'll never do well in your studies." Ginny might have continued on with her pseudo-Hermione spiel, but instead chose to show me the effects of Fred and George's mint gum: a neon mammoth bubble that waggled its trunk for a moment before bursting in a decidedly un-Hermione fashion. She pulled a magazine out of her bag with this and pushed the heavy thing to the ground so it landed with a thud. Opening up Sugar & Spice, she placed her feet on the desk and tipped her chair back. "I expect you have twenty minutes or so to prepare for her onslaught. She'll probably drag Ron with her, too… So, what's up with you? You look like you didn't get any sleep at all last night…"

I looked from the cover of her magazine, which sported Simon Antila-Delphinis's twenty-something half-sister – the one with the singing career that had made a blip for being so bad last month and would probably pass before next was over; Sedona, I think her name was, and I remember her mother was Ukrainian. Or maybe Rumanian? I didn't really care, but it was a curiosity – to the eraser on my desk amongst the scraps of paper I'd played around with the stapler-looking-object that you waved parchment under and caused the Ministry letterhead to appear back to Ginny, who was waggling her eyebrows in a way I didn't know if eyebrows should be waggled in, let alone hers. "Er… Ginny, dear, you haven't heard from your parents today?"

"Nah," she flipped the page. "Apparently, though, aqua and teal are the new pink and something-or-other, whatever that means. Pity teal makes me look like a burning Christmas tree; it's one of my favourite colours."

"And you don't wonder why I'm sitting in my classroom at," I paused and looked at the watch Severus had given me for my birthday, engraved with the words:

Ex hoc momento pendet aeternitas

which, he told me meant:

Eternity is hinged on this moment

"six twenty-seven in the morning, surrounded by paintings, a handful of statues, and enough paperwork to wallpaper Leeds at all?"

"I presumed there was a reason. Kinda curious what's so interesting about an eraser, though, that you're staring at it so hard? Is it a portkey or something?"

Tossing the eraser into a drawer, "No idea."

"Oh. Did you rob the Moskva Museum last night?"

"You know I can't portkey like this." She stuck out her tongue at me, then flipped another page. I hated to burst her bubble, but she might as well know. I had to tell my friends sometime. "No, it's from the MoM."

"You robed the MoM?"

"No, Shacklebolt did."

The legs of her chair hit the floor. Hard. "Shacklebolt? Bald,-Head-of-Aurors,-Prince-of-Hotness Shacklebolt?"

I laughed an its-probably-not-as-funny-as-it-seems-to-me-now laugh at this. "Well, I wouldn't exactly call him 'Prince of Hotness,' but-"

"Well, of course you wouldn't. You've no taste for men at all – I mean, you married Snape." Then, shrieking, "OH MY GOD!" the realization hit her, "You're the Minister!"

"Proxy Minister," I corrected, burying my head in my arms.

"Minister, Proxy Minister, whatever; they killed Scrimgouer and you're Minister and oh my god I've got to find Ron and Hermione; is it okay if I leave my things here, thanks, see you later," and, when I looked up, I could only see her back as she raced out the door.

Yeah, it was going to be a long day.

All night long reports had come in, all saying noting I wanted to hear. Dark Mark above Scrimgouer's apartment, and when auror and obliviators without Order ties to know not to respond arrived, and were picked off one by one by the Death Eaters who remained behind. Dark Mark in Bristol, for no adequately explained reason. Death Eaters found in St. Mungo's, now stunned and locked in the hospital's morgue. Death Eaters in the MoM, and no word yet on what was going on there, if Voldemort was trying to establish a "legitimate" government or…

Well, I don't know what else, only that Shacklebolt flooed much of what his group had stolen to me at Hogwarts and I now had to find something to do with paintings of snooty old geezers and flies of Merlin knew what…

"Éléonore?" came a call from the door.

I jumped to my feet and half ran to the door. "Sev'rus!"

With a disdainful movement, he raised his eyebrow, but caught me up in his arms nonetheless. "Sugar Quills or Chocolate Frogs?"

"I resent the implication," I laughed into the nape of his neck, my feet, at a loss as they dangled, kicked back-and-forth a bit. "Towzy and Diddy fed me very well, I hope you know."

"Oh, did they?"

"Yes. Belgian waffles and blanched pears with honey and this wonderful creation called 'Chai Tea'…"

He let loose that laugh that, still, so few besides me have heard and set me back down on my feet. Quickly turning grim again, "If you ask me to mind that man again, I-"

"What did he do – after freaking-out, of course, unless someone bothered to fill him in before we got to him?"

"Cricket."

"Cricket?"

"As in the game, cricket?"

"I'm half convinced it's a form of torture myself." I snorted at that. "Though he did try at first: before that he tried asking me my opinion of the situation in the Middle East."

"There's a situation in the Middle East?"

"Apparently."

"Merlin, it's nice to know someone out there has bigger issues then me." I waved my hand at my surroundings. "Want a priceless artefact to hang in your classroom? I think I saw a painting of Bridget Wenlock, the arithmancer, somewhere… Or would you like the statue of Paracelsus – the wizard, not mine? I'd put it in here, but I don't think my Paracelsus would like it much… I think I'll keep the painting of Andros the Invincible, though… if I remember where I put it…." I yawned loudly.

"You should rest, Éléonore."

"I'm waiting until I slip to the bottom of this hell – I don't want to fall asleep and find I've drifted further with no idea how I got there."

"Éléonore," he began condescendingly.

"It's just the hormones, Severus. I know you're being sweet, in your own way – and, yes, I promise I'll never tell any of the students you can be sweet if you wish to be – but I'm just not in an open mood for sweetness. I seem to be stuck in one of those modes, you know, where things keep alternating between busy, over-stimulating, can't-pause-to-think and such absolute listlessness and ennui that it's really inconceivable that all this has only been going on for a day or so. I keep waiting for the universe to knock itself back into place, but it's not happening yet, so don't bother being nice to me at all, I can't for the life of me appreciate it." I sunk onto my chair and leaned back. "Though if you could tell me why, of all things, when I asked the Order to steal everything important from the MoM they could and burnt the rest, they flooed me an eraser. No other writing supplies, just an eraser. It can't just be an eraser, but I can't figure out if it's something transfigured, or a portkey, or whatever; I half think it's someone's idea of a joke. It's dangerous! It's an enigma! No, wait, it's just an eraser!"

"I think you need sleep."

"I think so too, but I've class in… well, soon, and so do you. We can meet up after dinner and figure out the best way to run a government headquartered for the time being in the school's kitchen."

He, of course, didn't dignify my insanity with an answer, merely rolled his eyes at me and left. I probably do need sleep after this endless morning. And therapy.

After a moment of silence, I couldn't help but feel the resentment for the baby inside me growing. It was not my natural position to remain, safely hidden in Hogwarts, while others fought my war. Staying, hiding, not knowing what lay behind my door – it was a frightening thought. I hated that fear. I hated myself for having that fear. I hated the baby for forcing me from action, from taking all my choices away from me. I know that's wrong, that my choices weren't taken, that I just had to take care of myself for Claudia and they baby brother or sister she'd soon have. Still, I felt it…

There were options for situations like this. Options I hadn't even paused to consider with Claudia. Things weren't as bad then, not with Voldemort and the war. I didn't need to worry about government or teaching or the rest of it, not then. And now… another pregnancy. One that I physically and mentally unprepared for, not after last year. I hadn't time to get back to normal after, before it started back up again…

I think, in a dream, I wouldn't have dreamt it this way. I'm not sure, even now, if this is what I wanted, this way… It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded… Severus always thought it funny that I hated nearly every book written at the turn of the century, but I was positively in love with W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage. I told him it was like an Irving novel in more flowery prose, but he didn't see it. Still… the loss of dreams was painful, even if they were dreams we didn't know we had.

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I somehow made it through the Sixth Year class, my tired glares silencing the multitude of questions that they, naturally, wished to ask. Most of them had been in the DA before, and although some hadn't – a couple of Ravenclaws and the odd Slytherin; – enough of them were inclined to respect my position as professor that they caused me little trouble. The fear of NEWTs was still fresh in them, and though that fear would not last long, I hoped they'd be in the habit of respecting me by then. Even if Luna insisted on calling me Professeure Snape instead of Éléonore, as I'd asked.

Too stressed to eat, I skipped lunch in favour of asking the portraits why they out of all possible choices had been stolen – the painting Bridget Wenlock, for instance, had a fellow in Gringotts, while that of Justus Pilliwickle had a rather dull set in the offices of MI5 – and trying to find places I could put them that would a) keep them from getting stolen by Death Eaters or their spawn and b) satisfy their desire to be entertained. I was threatening them with dark closets and dust cloths when Hermione bounded through the door. Taking one look at me, she pulled me to my desk, sat me down, and handed me a stack of toast and a flagon of pumpkin juice before beginning to berate me on taking such poor care of myself.

"I feel to sick to eat, honestly, 'Mione."

"Eat."

"No."

"Éléonore-"

"I'm not three years old-"

"You're acting like it-"

"I'm not hungry-"

"You can't-"

"Okay, new Ministry Decree: the Minister cannot be forced into eating breakfast. I've the official stamps and whatnot around here somewhere. Give me a moment and it'll be all official and everyth-" Hermione stuffed a piece of toast into my mouth.

I tore the toast, chewing angrily. It was dry and cardboard-esque. When I finally swallowed, I glared angrily at my best friends. "I'm not in the mood for games, you guys! Do you have any idea what's going-?"

"Yes! You need to keep up your strength while-"

"Don't tell me what I need to do; I know full well what I need to do. It's kinda shouting at me right now," I gestured towards the stacked paintings behind me, "and I don't need you make it worse."

"I'm not-"

"I know you don't, but, God, can you just give it a rest for a moment?" I gestured to our classmates, who were making their way into the room. She at least knew to keep her protestations quiet while there were others in the room. A sudden loathing of both her and them overcame me, a disgust that they were content to just stay in Hogwarts and hide behind its walls. They were old enough to fight – hadn't I myself done so when I was younger then them – and yet, here they were, being schoolchildren in a world where it was not safe to be anyone who could not defend his- or herself. It was sickening, and made be angrier then I could believe to look at them, sitting in desks, doing nothing while the very future of our world hung in the balance. They could have done something, anything, and yet they sat here and forced me to work for them, some kind of Atlas for their causes. Don't get me wrong, I didn't want the world to end; I wouldn't so carelessly shrug as Ayn Rand would have wanted me to – I valued too much the world and all that was in it. But was it too much to ask that I have only one pressure? That I be made into a hero alone, one that would fight when necessary the villain and, in the meantime, be left to raise my daughter and my unborn child in peace? Let someone else lead the Order – Remus, for instance, would be so much better at it then I. Let someone else take charge of the government-in-exile. Another still could take the cursed position of DADA teacher. I didn't need this all. They kept on telling me I must rest for my health and the baby's and yet told me in the same breath that I must do what I must for society. It was enough to give me a headache in addition to the pain in my stomach and the bile in my throat.

I tried to contain myself, to hide the perhaps not undo anger I felt at them. I told them how I wanted to be addressed, what we were covering, and that every mention of my sex life would drop their final grades two points. But I couldn't help but think as I tried to teach them and be the person they wanted me to be that I should try to be kinder in my thoughts, because, after all, I was a special circumstance, and that they should revel in their youth and innocence while they could, before the Death Eater's stole away their happiness. But I couldn't, nor could I bring myself to worry overmuch on it. I already knew my fate.


	29. In Which I am Visited by the Ghost of Christmas Present

There is a moment, one not special or unique until you look back on it and see how it was the fulcrum upon which everything that followed the rest of your life turned and without which the rest of your life would never, ever have happened. For me, there were several fulcra – my parents' death, coming to Hogwarts, kissing Severus that day – without which my life would not be recognizable as itself.

I could not tell, not from this close, if I had come across another. Proxy Minister, what did that mean when I'd practically no power? From Louis Alphonse to Franz Joseph II to Akihito to Ptolemy IC Pierius and Arisnoë XXV Thaumantias, every wizarding world leader expressed condolences, heartbreak, outrage, but none offered help beyond a shipment or two of medical supplies. They were content to sit in their palaces and parliaments, refusing to see that, if Voldemort succeeded in Britain, he'd not rest until he'd crossed the channel and taken France too. And from France, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian, the Ottoman, the New Egyptian, the Sino-Japanese; the sultanates of the Indian subcontinent… Voldemort wanted immortality and would suffer no power that could challenge him. He'd destroy the Muggles in every place his shadow lingered in the name of the father who wouldn't stay with his mother for his sake and, when there were no more Muggles, he'd find another group to go after. Perhaps the religious, perhaps the sick and disabled, perhaps a specific race or peoples, but he would choose one and destroy it, and another, and another, until all that's left in the world is him and the charred ruins of the world. And when he stands upon them, crushing the ashes of those that fought him too late with the heel of his book, he will look for another enemy, making one up if he cannot find one, and never rest through all his immortal days.

But how did you tell that to men so secure in their magic that they thought nothing could touch them, forgetting that their enemies had magic too and, in this, at least, was by far the stronger? These wizards, most ruling only over shadows of former glory, were weary of anything that might cost them the rest.

No matter, I told my people – they called themselves my "KoRT," an acronym for Knights of the Round Table they pronounced like "court," just to annoy me. It'd been "Ely's Expats" for a week before I managed to point out to them that, technically, they weren't expatriates – that it was better this way. Foreign armies and PMCs running around rarely did any good for the governments that invited them over. I told them we could handle it without them and be better for it. I think some of them actually believed me too.

But the fact was that I didn't know how long we could hold this up. After the hits we'd taken with Voldemort's takeover, the total of capable fighters at our – my – command came to just under forty and though this could be inflated a bit with drafts from my NEWT level classes, the fact remained that we were weaker and more poorly equipped then Voldemort's forces, which now included in addition to the Death Eaters the regular wizarding citizens who didn't care who lead them so long as they could go about their lives. My contingent only included those who actively disliked him before he'd taken over and recruiting was hard seeing as how none of us were really considered appropriate dinner guests anymore.

Surprisingly, though, the real problem of leading my KoRT was not the issue of what on Merlin's green earth we were to do, but of how it was to survive. Nobility and riches were as rare amongst wizards as they were with Muggles, and thus it should come as no surprise to anyone that while the combined Black-Potter-Snape fortunes lingered around the one point five billion range, the most rest had relied upon the Ministry for the greater part of their incomes.

Which was why there was a tent city between the far side of the lake and the Forbidden Forrest and I am now currently sitting in the Hogwarts kitchens once again, this time surrounded by fancy French pastries and a number of account ledgers that made no sense with ma comptable, Fleur. "…the main issues, 'owever, are going to be deciding primarily 'ow you wish to pay your chevaliers, which is a nightmare naturally, and 'ow you're going to get the money back after le gouvernement approprié is reinstated."

"How rich am I, Fleur?"

"In your own name? The Potier fortune comes to about a 'undred thirty thousand galleons worth of coins, jewels, and other liquidités, another 'undred thousand in proprieties, and roughly two 'hundred twenty thousand in stocks, bonds, and securities. But, weekly, if you assume the same pay scale, you are looking at eight thousand two 'undred thirty-four galleons, three sickles, and eleven knuts a week, or four months before you've run through your liquid assets paying your chevaliers alone, not counting on supplying, maintaining, and rebuilding as necessary St. Mungo's 'Ospital."

I groaned and reached for another turnover. It was mid-November now and I'd been Proxy Minister for two-and-a-half months. I was also trying to deal with being five months pregnant, the mother of an eight-month-old who had discovered the twin joys of crawling and repeatedly dropping toys, and thirteen months married to the man whose NEWT Potions class I attended for an hour-and-a-half every Friday morning before leaving to teach Third Year DADA. Today was a Tuesday morning, however, and instead of half a double Potions to attend, I'd only my NEWT-level DADA to worry about after I somehow figured out what I was going to do so my self-proclaimed KoRT could buy things like food without relying on the generosity of Hogwarts (with its thankfully untouchable Gringotts accounts) and its kitchens. "Do I even want to know how much it takes to keep a hospital like St. Mungo's going?"

"No – though since it is operating more as une antenne chirurgicale then an actual 'ospital at the moment, it is not as expensive as it could be." And field hospital it was indeed, the small remaining staff treating more battle injuries then boils these days – which by lucky chance meant that its stockpile of potions and other medical paraphernalia, which would not have lasted as long as it had at full operational capacity, meant that St. Mungo's was still mostly well-stocked. It had also turned into a shelter of sorts, where those my Knights rescued ended up sleeping in empty wards until such time as they would be safe again or found family to stay with. There was even a contingent of twenty or twenty-five Muggles who'd been brought to the hospital for patching up after they were attacked by Death Eaters who'd asked to remain in the hospital, un-obliviated, and help out with the long-term patients. People still had to be fed and clothed, though, and housing people indefinably in St. Mungo's or HQ or magically-expanded tents on school grounds was not practical.

I closed my eyes, tightly, as a spasm kicked about my insides. Severus knew I was having them still, as did Madam Pomprey, but neither could figure out a reason why I might be having such pains for all these months without it harming the baby. Stress was the best guess they had, though there'd been a theory floating about for a while that had something to do with Claudia being Rh positive and me being Rh negative even thought I'd been given some sort of potion I couldn't remember taking. Personally, I saw it as the baby's way of punishing me for resenting it as I still couldn't help but doing, especially now that Quidditch was starting again. Not that I could have found time to play anyway, but still. Perhaps because I was afraid of February coming, and, with it, the baby I carried with such hate, I'd already picked out names. I didn't know if it was a boy or girl, only that I was going to call it Henri-Auguste or Julia-Hélène. "That's a lot of money," I answered causally, doodling idly on a page of calculations.

Fleur snatched it from me, flipped it over, and pointed with a long, Bastille Red nail at the final sum at the bottom. "I 'ave spent many 'ours running the numbers, Alexandrie-Margaux, and this is what I've come up with."

"Twenty galleons a week?"

"Once you factor out living expenses – taxes, utilités – and the fact that, for practical reasons, the majority of purchases until the end of the war are going to be made at Muggle markets, if at all – twenty galleons a week is a very decent pay. It is just over four 'undred pounds a month."

"Sounds good," I told her tiredly, quill moving to doodle on this page instead.

The Frenchwoman snatched the paper and the quill from me this time. "Avez-vous dormi?" she asked me, her voice laced with concern. "Il y a des sacs sous vos yeux. Vous semblez que vous ayez eu des cauchemars."

"I have no idea what you're saying, but I'll tell you now I resent the implication."

"I merely was asking you if you 'ave been sleeping, Alexandrie-Margaux. If you're going to insist on being la douze Baronne de Calais, you really should learn français. It's embarrassing."

"Of course I've been sleeping," I failed to mention how poorly, or how all the dreams I could remember having of late were either of the analogue Harry or the Elder Wand, neither of which I particularly wanted to share with anyone, let alone Fleur, who'd probably think I was crazy for such things. What kind of well-adjusted girl dreams of being a boy anyway? Well, at least I think I'm well adjusted… "And I can't do anything about the whole baronne thing. Zacharie-Richard gave Calais years ago. As far as the French know – the Muggle French – there is no baron de Calais. Besides, Nord-Pas-de-Calais is British as far as the wizarding world is concerned, so can't we all use English like good, sane people?"

"English is une langue barbare, and you don't look like you've been sleeping."

"No, you're right," I said sarcastically, "I've not. I'm really a pregnant, sun-loving vampire, who doesn't need to sleep at all, and have taken over the British government in attempt to subvert the humans and gain mastery over them."

Her glare shot daggers at me. "It is your fault, madam Ministre, that I'm missing the fall showing of Louis Vuitton and Guy Laroche, so kindly do not laugh at me."

Somehow, that only made me feel worse.

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"There are five – well, six if you want to be technical," I told my Seventh Year NEWT class, sitting on the banister of the landing outside my office, legs dangling no more then six feet from the floor. I don't know why I'd chosen to sit there, only that it'd seemed like a good idea at the time. I was having lots of ideas that seemed like a good idea at the time. I went up to the astronomy tower last week on one of them and ending up sitting there, staring at the spot where Dumbledore had tried to convince Draco not to kill me for over an hour before I realized it was freezing outside and had started to rain. Not long before that I'd gone into Myrtle's bathroom and sat, staring at the broken tap that would lead me to the Chamber of Secrets, for ages before going to find Claudia and look up ways to destroy pieces of the soul, "- types of DADA magic: physical or augmentative; sensory; hostile or aggressive; movement; and protective, also known as defensive. The sixth, transmogritive, is usually not classified as such, largely because the magic it describes comprises of parts of each of the others… Lecquetus the Monk wrote in one of his diaries of a wizard he knew who transfigured his ears into those of a giant fruit bat for a duel and was stuck with them for a year before he could undo them…" The mental image that caused made me giggle a bit, which struck me a second later as not the sanest thing to do in front of a classroom of students I'd classes with for the better part of seven years and wouldn't be uncurious at such an unusual reaction to such a boring book. Quickly, I cut the small laugh off and continued with the opening of my lecture. "You guys covered sensory, protective, and, to some degree, movement with Severus. We finished up with movement last week – three cheers us – and today we get to dive right into the aggressive." I clapped my hands together, doing my best to ignore the pain in my belly. "And you are all very lucky, because aggressive magic is my spes-e-al-ity, and a lot less boring then the augmentative the 'recommended course schedule' wants me to cover until the Christmas hols."

Several of my classmates/students looked at me like I was going off the deep end in front of them. Maybe I was – not many people got excited over teaching Seventh Years these sorts of charms. I felt my eyes glaze over, and remembered briefly a dream I'd had the night before, wherein Ron had been screaming at the analogue-Harry, "We thought you knew what you were doing! We thought Dumbledore had told you what to do, we thought you had a real plan!" I shook it away quickly, not wanting to think on it and charged forward, perhaps a bit too excitedly for the topic at hand. Swinging my legs over the banister, I took the stairs down (though I would have loved nothing more to jump, a spell softening the ground where my feet would have landed so it would have done me no harm at all, I chose not to, even thought it sounded like one of those good ideas. I was beginning to distrust them, my ideas, though instincts had kept me alive a lot longer then one would have thought with my luck. Still…

"Anyone want to take a stab," I swallowed a laugh before it could escape, "at naming the classes of aggressive magic?"

Hermione's hand was the first and only to jump into the air.

"Oh, come on now. I know Hermione can't be the only one who did the reading. Padma?"

The Ravenclaw answered after only a moment's hesitation, voice quiet in the hush. I'd quickly learned that there were few reasons why my students might be so quiet, especially a group that, knowing their teacher so well, was naturally inclined towards boisterousness. One reason was fear, and, while the subject was a tad gruesome, I could sense none of that. No, I felt they were driven to silence because they were uncomfortable, perhaps having caught the black laughter I'd tried so hard to hold back, perhaps because they were discussing a subject that they knew I was more then just talented in. Some of them had seen me in the entrance hall last spring, throwing Unforgivables and borderline Dark curses like candy at my enemies. One of their number had murdered the late headmaster. Or maybe it was that these students of mine, these classmates, were all inherently good witches and wizards, not caring for the nastier, Darker aspects of life, dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good… They saw Voldemort as evil, yes, but that's all they saw him as. They didn't see the unwanted orphan he once was. They didn't see the girl from the cupboard I'd once been. "Blunt, sharp, hot, cold, and loud."

"Five points to Ravenclaw," I said, and pulled my wand from my pocket, where Paracelsus was napping, and pointed it at what appeared to be nothing more then a padded dressmaker's dummy in the middle of the room. "We'll start with blunt." I made a quick, backwards "J"-like flick with my wand and cast, "Frendo." A black-and-blue mark appeared along side of the dummy's chest, marking where bruised rib bones would be had it been a person.

Beginning my lecture, knowing that students had to be induced into learning when there seemed to reason they would want to learn spells of bruising and breaking, cutting and slicing, I found not even the stereotypically expected Slytherin eyes lit with excitement, or even academic interest. I tried, I honestly did, but I couldn't control the fact that, yes, Severus had taught me spells and others like them back in Fourth Year, and I'd absorbed them greedily, as I had books of perilous and imperfect magic in my years of self-study. In my bag now, along with the expected law book and the expected book I've-been-reading-in-my-free-time-for-months-because-I've-not-had-any-free-time-in-which-to-finish-it, there was a book on aggressive magic in my bag. To be technical, it was a book on imbuing weapons with aggressive spells, but it was still interesting.

Suddenly, halfway through explaining the legal ramifications of using these spells on a person without really good reason (ie, war) and how, if I caught them using any of these spells without said really good reason or practicing on dummies I thoughtfully would provide, I'd set the courts on them, just as soon as I had courts to set on them, I paused. I'd still half-hour left of class, during which I intended to finish my lecture so I could start straight into the theory and practice next week, and felt that familiar hate growing in me. It only happened with the Seventh Years and was coming more and more often, until I was not sure I'd be able to hide it for much longer. "Does anyone know why I am teaching you these spells?"

An awkward pause filled the already silent room. A few answers tumbled out of confused, uncomprehending mouths, each jumbled with the other, the nonsense they spoke growing no clearer in the tangle of words. "Because it's on the syllabus," came their answers; "Because we're at war," came others still.

When silenced reigned again, I gave my own answer. "I'm teaching them too you, yes, so you can fight, because I'm not such a fool to think that Hogwarts will remain impenetrable forever. Voldemort will not let such a prize as this remain in 'filthy, bloody-traitor' hands forever, and he is not as patient a 'man' as he thinks.

"But I'm not standing here, training you to be mes chevaliers personnelles or anything of that sort. No, I'm teaching you because you need to have the choice to fight if you want to, on whatever side you want to, because if I sit up here and teach you only the fluffy, happy magic that doesn't hurt anybody, if you choose to fight and stand up for what you believe in, freedom or democracy or purity of blood or, I dunno, conkers, you'll surely die. I want to give you the skills so that, no matter what you choose, you mightn't die. I've already buried too many people…"

I trailed off, lost in the memory of death and the dead, and tried to remember for a fleeting moment something about my parents that wasn't their dying words. I couldn't, and the sadness I felt over this momentarily erased the anger I felt at the children in front of me that would not fight, at the naïve wizards of the world who thought they needn't fight for what was right. I think it reached my eyes, for I caught a curious glance or two from those in my "audience" who were my friends. "I'm going to…" I started to say, but trailed off when I couldn't think of anything to add to that, and wandered out of my classroom, one hand on my five-month belly in hopeless attempt to quell the ache there, the other waving my wand so that my bag followed after me, bobbing carelessly a few inches above the floor.

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Normally, after my last class on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays – days when my last class was one I taught, not Charms (as it was on Mondays) or Transfiguration (per Wednesdays) – I would pop quickly down to my dungeon apartments, change out of the clothes, now uncomfortably greasy, as if I'd been sleeping in them, I'd taught in and into something fresher, looser. Then, making sure Winky had given Claudia a snack about tea time (she always did), I'd take my daughter and head back up to my office, dealing with whatever issues my students or my KoRT brought to me in the same, even-handed, don't-let-them-see-how-stressed-I-really-am motion.

I felt hot, and sick, and my fingers ached, as if wanting to pick up a sponge or a broom and clean something. Maybe I'd feel better if I could do the compulsory scrubbing that eased my conscience, but there wasn't time, and I was too tired anyway. Normally, I could ignore it, get on with my day, and then go back to the apartment at some God-late hour and just crash, Severus understanding, having done similarly when he was still a spy, and move me to the bed if I fell asleep elsewhere.

Today, however, I felt hotter and sicker and the ache in fingers had moved to radiate up and down my belly, up into my chest, around my ribs… It wasn't a pregnancy pain, and I found myself half hoping that I was truly sick, in some incurable, cancerous way, just so I wouldn't have to deal with it or the impossible mental anguish that was this war and my place in it.

I stopped short at that thought, arms catching in the sleeves of the shirt I was trying to remove, and I overbalanced. With a tumble, I fell to the floor, landing on my already discarded robe and pants.

"Mistress Éléonore Snape ma'am?" came a concerned squeak from the nursery next door. A moment later, the elf, her thin hair tucked beneath a white-edged bonnet, her pale blue dress clean and pressed, with a towel almost as large as she was over her shoulder, it alone showing signs of use and wear, appeared. "Mistress Éléonore, is you alright?" Before giving me a chance to answer, Winky pulled me to my feet, artfully plucked the shirt from my tangled limbs, and pushed me towards the bed. "Mistress Éléonore needs to be taking better care of herself. Mistress Éléonore will rest-"

"Winky," I tried to interrupt, sitting up with another protest from my stomach, and struggled to stand.

The house elf glared at me with such intensity, I unwittingly found myself sitting back down. "Mistress Éléonore should rest. Winky will take care of her. Winky a good elf." She said this last part like a challenge. When I said nothing more, "Lie down, Winky bring soup and makes sure friends of Mistress Éléonore leave her be."

With a look that said, "Move and you face my wrath," – a surprisingly frightening look from such a small, wrinkly creature – Winky snapped her fingers and disappeared, leaving me to scoot back until I was leaning against the headboard and try to get comfortable. Failing that, I accio-ed my book on charming weapons from my bag, figuring if I was going to be stuck on bed rest again, I was not going to spend it grading essays, so help me Merlin.

Half hour later, Severus entered the room, picked up a stack of papers he'd been grading in bed last night from his bedside table, and turned around, half out the door before he saw me, pouting as I turned the page of my text a little too violently for a bibliophile's liking. Blinking once, he took note of how I was wrapped in a sheet (because Winky had not thought to provide me with fresh clothing and I dared not get up and get some myself because Merlin knew that'd be the moment she returned, and asked me what was going on) and fuming at the mouth.

"Winky's grounded me," I glowered at him, crossing my arms over my rounded stomach, feeling every bit the petulant teenage I surely looked. "Will you kindly hand me some clothes?"

Lips curling imperceptibly upwards, he answered in the same, even, slightly over-patient tone he used in his classes, "If you were unwise enough to be caught up in house elf madness, I don't think I should." After a slight pause, in which I though he was daring himself to say what he did next, "Besides, I'm rather enjoying the current view."

I hissed a few Sus-learned epithets at my husband and went back to my book, reading on how magic clung to things. Magic liked organic things the best, and clung to them the longest, but was also the hardest to charm. Lead was the easiest, but things slipped easily from the dense, malleable metal. Gold, silver, and iron were comfortable middle ground. The book did mention, somewhat slyly, that blood, because it was both organic and ferrous, was a wonderful thing for holding certain spells, but that was Dark, Dark magic, not to be spoken of… I snorted at the prudishness of textbooks, and looked up, surprised to find Severus still standing there. "Y'know, Severus, this isn't a museum: you can touch the artwork if you want."

"And face the wrath of Winky? I think not."

I pouted some more and returned to my book. "You could at least bring Claudia to me." He gave me a look of raised eyebrows and, reluctantly, I promised him, "I'll read her fairytales if it makes you happy."

Nonetheless, he brought our daughter to me, whispering loud enough for me to hear, "Your mother won't be reading you any more of those kinds of books anymore."

"They're your books," I pointed out to him with a laugh, snuggling my girl and laughing as she said something that sounded almost, but not quite, like, "Mummy."

"Yes, but I'd like Claudia to be able count to ten before we start teaching her to maim."

"Firstly, I wasn't teaching her, I was reading aloud in her presence. Secondly, not all the spells would have maimed – some would only have only wounded."

Resolutely, I put Claudia beside me, adjusting the pillows so I could lean on my side as I read. She crawled a bit away, but only enough to be teasing, as if to say, "You've been away all day, Mummy, why should I want to play with you now?"

"I know, honey, I know," I told her as her father left to do work, "I hate to leave you so alone, but… Mummy has work and school." I knew that was no excuse, especially not for an eight-month-old, and tugged instead gently on one of her soft, black locks, already almost long enough to pull back. "Being home with Winky is more fun then being in classes with me all day – or Daddy. All sorts of stinky Potions, and Daddy's always so loud – no fun at all. You like it when I read to you, don't you? Mummy's bookworm."

Claudia gurgled, giving a high-pitched baby's laugh, and I laughed with her. "So, let's see if I can find something to read that Daddy won't claim gives you nightmares… Ah, I know," fixing my toga-esque sheet; I summoned another book and opened it to the first story. "High on a hill in an enchanted garden, enclosed by tall walls and protected by strong magic, flowed the Fountain of Fair Fortune…"

Time passed, and at one point Claudia fell asleep and I too, lying beside her, could soon no longer hold my leaden eyelids open and let the darkness that was my dreams take me.

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But they were not the dreams of the analogue-Harry or Horcruces that came to me. Instead, I dreamt again as I had that day, over a year ago now, when Severus had preformed the quasi-occult ceremony I'd created and poured the potion that gave me my beautiful, keep-Voldemort-out-of-my-head tattoo of the panther, Niynhi, blazoned on my right thigh.

I saw that blue-tinged forest, the sky a near black wonder, littered with stars that shone as wildly and brightly as nothing else. The grass at my feet and the forest, endlessly stretched out before me, a thousand miles from anything, were dark as steel. A soft cushion of blue-grey needles softened my footfalls as I tried to walk into the deepness.

No sooner had I approached the edge of the small, circular glade I stood in then did I become aware of eyes – a thousand eyes, lidless and malignant, watching unceasingly, waiting for me to falter – following my every move from every conceivable direction. They frightened me, and I knew what Darkness it was, however jailed by the forest's edge. I could see none of the thousands of scarlet eyes that I felt, but I knew they were there, and while I mightn't be able to see them, they could certainly feel me.

I felt naked, exposed, and while the wind that blew from what I took to be the south was warm enough, I clutched my arms to me in desperate attempt to warm my shivering body. Or keep my insides in, as if every organ had suddenly decided it was time to take that nice vacation on the Rivera they'd been wanting. Rushing backwards without looking, wanting only to be as far from the forest edge as possible, I stumbled over something and fell backwards with a small scream.

My head and back landed on the soft, springy grass, forcing my eyes to the sky as my legs remained bent at an awkward angle around the warm, deeply breathing something that had caused me to fall. Above me, I could make out the constellation Orion above me, Betelgeuse its bright shoulder, Rigel its foot, and the belt – Mintaka, Alnilam, and Alnitak. For a moment I was lost in the sidereal beauty, before I remembered the star that made up Orion's other shoulder.

The Amazon Star.

Gamma Orionis.

Bellatrix.

My stomach clenched in knots, eyes of their own accord following the line from Mintaka southwest, looking for Sirius, the Dog Star, as if to prove to myself that, though her star might still shine, so did Sirius's, and his was brighter many times over.

The tree tops blocked my line of sight, and it was this disappointment, or, at the very least, vague distraction, that I was still lying on the cool and, as I now noticed, slightly damp ground. I could feel the heat radiating from the thing beneath my legs, slowly rising and falling with each slow, steady breath. Cautiously, still weary of the eyes that watched me yet somehow more comfortable knowing that something was here with me, I reached my arm towards the thing. Eyes still on the heavens, my hand felt the silken fur, and, without looking, I knew what it was.

"Niynhi," I whispered.

"Éléonore," the panther growled softly, making each of the syllables of my name long and drawn, almost a sigh…

Slowly, with intent, I tried to sit, preparing myself to battle with my gravid, tired body to get where I wanted. But I moved with a fluid grace I did not normally process, and a quick glance told me what my body had already known: how, in this dream, no child grew in worn-out womb, and no spasms wracked my quickly weakening body. I pulled myself to Indian-style, and looked at the mountain lion, its amber eyes wide and deep as it stared unblinkingly at me, its coat darker then the night.

"Vous ne devriez pas être ici," the mountain lion purred. You should not be here, I somehow knew, just as I knew Paracelsus called me mère instead of mum, I knew what it said.

"Why not?" I asked, casting my eyes fearfully at the forest around me. While I, logically, knew I was safe so long as the spirit or whatever Niynhi was I'd summoned was with me, I could still feel the presence of The Other.

"Não é contudo seguro aqui." You are not safe yet here.

The presence in the woods. "What is it?"

"Sie wissendas, was es ist."You know what it is.

I shook my head. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"No sabe que sabe, pero hace."You don't know you know, but you do. "È stato poi con lei per più lungo lei può ricordare." It has been with you longer then you can remember.

"What-?" I began, desperate to know what it was talking about.

"Wake up," it purred, and I woke to the feel of long, calloused fingers brushing a lock of hair from my face. I leaned into the touch, not opening my eyes, and found myself tumbling into a deeper, true sleep.

I woke up again to the sound of Severus reading. "There were once three brothers who were travelling along a lonely, winding road…" I stretched a bit, my joints making small aches as they were forced to move, before returning to my foetal-like curl. I could feel Claudia, her soft head resting on my breast, moving a little as she breathed, her breaths already becoming deeper and slower as her father's rich, expressive baritone lulled her into the sleep that had escaped from me. I buried my face in her hair, smelling of baby soap and warm skin.

Emerald eyes flicking open, it took me a moment to process what I saw. A haze of cream and black blurred together before coming sheets and trousers – Severus was sitting on the bed, my legs tangled around his, presumably as I'd thrashed in my sleep, my head pressing against his hip, Claudia curled up between us. "…So the oldest brother, who was a combative man, asked for a wand more powerful than any in existence; a wand that must always win duels for its owner, a wand worthy of a wizard who had conquered Death!" The story of the legendary Perevell brothers: Antioch, Cadmus, and Ignotus. It was the last in The Tales of Beedle the Bard Dumbledore had left to me in his will. I smiled a little at that – it was so like Dumbledore to leave me a book of children's fairytales – and listened.

"…Then the second brother, who was an arrogant man, decided that he wanted to humiliate Death still further, and asked for the power to recall others from Death…"

As he spoke, I imagined the tale, a forest like the one in my dreams. A bridge, like the ones you saw in pictures of old plantations outside Charleston: white, low, and wide, spanned a deep, swamp-like river, some of the nearby trees submerged halfway up their trunks. You wouldn't see the opposite bank from the current, so wide and shadowy it was in my mind. The brothers crossed, Antioch first, then Cadmus, with Ignotus taking up the rear. Ignotus would be the shortest, of only average height and build, with messy, dishwater hair. Antioch, the eldest, would be easily tallest, several inches over six feet, with painfully straight dark locks and fierce blue eyes. My thoughts made Cadmus burly and red-faced, of indeterminate colouring.

Halfway across, when the side of the river they'd started on had finally disappeared in the mist and the one they were making for couldn't yet be seen, a black-cowled figure appeared before them. Deceptively strong, ebon-skinned hands curled like claws from under long sleeves, and amethyst eyes, bright with betrayal, shone in his sharply angular face. Hair the colour of bone escaped en masse from the hood of his cloak and, seemingly undisturbed by the presence of several of these strands in his line of vision, he began, congratulating the brothers falsely. He offered a prize to each, knowing the fallibility of wizards, and contained a laugh behind his thin lips.

For Antioch, he made a wand of great power, snapping a twig from an overhanging tree and, without further finishing, invested it with impossible strength.

For Cadmus, he picked a river stone that had been washed upon the bridge planks and held it tightly in his fist for a moment. To it he gave the power to temporarily raise the spirits of the dead, and the stone glowed black as his skin with its power.

"…And then Death asked the third and youngest brother what he would like. The youngest brother was the humblest and also the wisest of the brothers, and he did not trust Death. So he asked for something that would enable him to go forth from that place without being followed by Death. And Death, most unwillingly, handed over his own Cloak of Invisibility…"

In my dream vision, the silvery fabric Death pulled from an inner pocket looked exactly like my cloak, and he looked murderous to give it up. But he had promised, and Death never broke his promises. Distantly, I dream-searched for a reason why this might be so, but nothing exciting enough came to mind.

"…he boasted loudly of the powerful wand he had snatched from Death himself, and how it made him invincible. That very night, another wizard crept upon the oldest brother as he lay, wine-sodden, upon his bed. The thief took the wand and, for good measure, slit the oldest brother's throat…"

…pale hands, desire making them steady, gripping a jewelled dagger…

"…Though she had returned to the mortal world, she did not truly belong there and suffered. Finally the second brother, driven mad with hopeless longing, killed himself so as truly to join her…"

…a phial rolling from a hand, now to clench no more, and smashing on the floor, a black stone engraved with the Perevell coat of arms falling amidst shattered glass and remnants of white powder…

"…only when he had attained a great age that the youngest brother finally took off the Cloak of Invisibility and gave it to his son. And then he greeted Death as an old friend, and went with him gladly…"

Eyes still closed, I relaxed, practically purring in the cocoon of bodies and blankets my family had made. Claudia, deeply asleep, spread the fingers of one hand against me, as if reaching for something, and let out a sigh in her sleep; her other hand was clasped tight around my finger.

"Come on, Claudia," I heard Severus say, gently placing warm hands around our tiny daughter and lifting her slowly to him. "Let's get you in your own bed."

The sound of footsteps and a child being laid to bed drifted to me as I lay, languid on the sheets. Despite my odd dream, I felt more relaxed and refreshed then I had since… since Dumbledore's death.

Why did he half to die for me? I was ready, I was willing, and dying to keep Claudia safe – dying, like my mother had, to keep my daughter safe – was something I'd been willing to do. Still was willing to do. I know he said that death was the next great adventure, but couldn't he have stayed a while longer? I was searching through every spellbook in the land for a way to destroy something as Dark as Voldemort's Horcruces and had gotten so far to search for swords that could destroy the fragments. All I knew is that Basilisk venom had done one in; Dumbledore had destroyed another. I'd an ancient relic, a fake necklace, and the broken pieces of a ring in a box inside a larger one that held such feminine hygiene products that, of late, I'd not much use for. I was no closer to finding out who RABmight be or what s/he might've done with the real locket then before, still had to find whatever happened to Hufflepuff's cup, and figure out whatever the last Horcrux was before taking down the man I was destined to kill or be killed by.

I wondered why I'd put the Perevell crest on the Resurrection Stone in my half-dream. Sure, the stone looked familiar, like the one in the Gaunt Ring, but that was only a dream thing. The Resurrection Stone didn't exist, and so my mind grabbed the first thing it thought might look at it to take its dream place. Which was exactly why Death's cloak looked so much like my own – it was the only cloak I knew of, and so Death's cloak would look like it.

Then I remembered how, in a dream of the analogue-Harry, Voldemort had found something he called The Elder Wand, which would, supposedly, make him stronger then he already was.

I jumped out of the bed.

Clutching the blanket tight to me, I rushed into the bathroom and closed the door with a crash behind me. Turning quickly, I fell to my knees and, a little too far for ease, stretched out to open the vanity doors. I paused for a minute, hand on the handle, wondering what I was doing. I couldn't be – a dream image of something did not make it true. But I'd dreamt of Draco and the diadem, and both had been real, hadn't they? I'd not even been truly asleep, just lightly dozing while Severus read aloud the story for Claudia…

All this and more rushed through my mind as I pulled the doors open, and my body leaned forward to reach the container in the back of the cabinet. I took it out in a rush, the box clanging against the pipe drain, and opened it even faster, removing the wooden box that held my sundry treasures. A mixture of trepidation and awe filled me as I lifted the latch, almost reverently, and felt a wave of Darkness pass over me. Torn between nausea and expectancy, I lifted the black stone from the velvet lining. The Perevell crest remained etched within its cracked body.

Curling my fingers over it, I pressed it hard into my palm, feeling the sharp, unfinished edges of the break draw blood as I held it tighter, screwing my eyes shut and hoping, just hoping, for something I did not know how to describe. A minute, two, I knew not how long I waited for some sound, some glowing light to give away the secrets of the possibly-fairytale stone. Nothing happened.

I opened my eyes with a sad sigh, and gasped when I saw the figure, ethereal but strangely tangible, and fell backwards on my heels, landing on my backside as the stone slipped from my grasp. The spirit of Albus Dumbledore smiled at me, and then flickered back into none-existence.

"Éléonore?" came a knock at the door. "Are you alright?"

"Yea," I gasped, struggling to my feet as I pulled a robe on over the sheet. I cracked the door open and peeked out at Severus. "I just tripped over this silly blanket. It's to be expected when you can't see your feet anymore."

I don't know why I lied to Severus, or how I could do it with a smile. He backed away from the door acquiescently, a hint of reticence in his movements, as if he was ashamed of himself for worrying so much about such an innocent sound. It wasn't until I'd closed the door and turned on the shower did I let the false expression fall from my face.

Tying the robe tightly about my waist, I bent to the floor and picked up the stone – dare I think it? the Resurrection Stone – and clasped it tightly. I forced all my sorrow and anger and despair into the Stone, all of my thoughts on Dumbledore.

He flickered into existence by the bathroom sink.

I wanted to run to him, throw my arms around him and sob, exactly like a little girl whose grandfather had just returned from the dead. I wanted to shout at him, yelling, "You think you can just leave whenever you want, like you're watching television here?" and tell him never to leave me again. But I couldn't, I just stood there and forgot how to breathe. Tears came to my eyes, blurring the shadowy, semi-solid figure still further. "G-gr-grandfather," I sobbed quietly, sliding to sit on the tub edge.

"Éléonore," he answered, his voice coming as if from far away.

I kept staring at him, the only feeling breaking through the numbness the growing pain in my palm. My mind was going, this can't be real, not this not this not this too, the thoughts running together like water, drawn to the lowest point in the road, puddling and growing with each passing second. At last, I choked out pleas, accusations, tears. "What did you do that for?" I sobbed, "I was supposed to die! Not you, never you – how could you leave me here, alone, to do all this? Minister? You were supposed to be that. Minister and headmaster and teacher and leader and I can't do any of those things. I don't know how. You just left me here to pick up the pieces knowing I can't, couldn't. Merlin, Dumbledore, how could you do this? How could you? You should have let me die! My life is worth so much less than yours – you're the hero, the leader, the great man. I don't know anything. I don't know how to destroy the Horcruces, how to find the cup and the other thing and the real locket – I've searched and searched and searched, and have about come to the point where I'm willing to hatch a Basilisk myself, just so something exists that I know can destroy them – I've found secret passage ways Dad and Sirius and Remus never dreamed of, burial chambers, treasure vaults; a room made of glass beneath the lake, where you can watch the giant squid and the merpeople – I've found rat skeletons and snake skins and bird nests and hidden prizes – I've read every book I could find that might tell me something, anything, about the Founders or Voldemort's history – but I can't find a way to destroy the monster who created this mess, not even now, when I'm professor and Minister and baronne and… and…" I felt my knees buckle and my back slide down the tub's edge, until I was sitting, on the cool tile floor, feeling tears fall upon my bare knees. I couldn't stop it, nor make my mouth form anything besides rasping, phlegm-filled breaths.

"Éléonore. You wonderful girl. You brave, brave woman. I'm so proud of you," the shade walked towards me, his long hair and beard slight more luminescent then I recalled, his star-and-crescent robes rather billowier. Kneeling, he sank to my eye level and put a hand (a distinct pressure itself, with more the weight of air behind it then of flesh and bone) on my cheek. Light, papery lips kissed my forehead. "I never meant for it to pass this way."

I hiccupped, the desire to cling to him as if I were a little child growing stronger, though I remained afraid that, if I were to hold him as I desired, my arms would pass through his thin construction, something more than a ghost, less than man. At last, the Stone tight in my bloody hand, I managed, "The Deathly Hallows."

Worry creasing his lucent face, "Ah, yes."

"The Ring was the Stone." Rather then curiosity or anger taking dominance of his features, shade-Dumbledore looked more like a child caught sneaking a sweet before dinner then a man confronted by a woman babbling what should have been nonsense. I wanted it to be nonsense, and for him to tell me so, even though, somewhere, I realized there was a logical fallacy somewhere in there.

"Can you forgive me? Can you forgive me, Éléonore, for not trusting you? For not telling you? Child, I only feared that you would fail as I had failed. I only dreaded that you would make my mistakes. I crave you pardon, Éléonore, my granddaughter. I have known, for some time now, that you are by far the better person."

I blinked, the last of my tears drying with surprise, and straightened a little against the tub, very conscious of my husband waiting for me in the next room and the impossibility of the situation before me. "What are you talking about?" Dumbledore was the kindest, best man I'd ever known after Severus…

"The Hallows, the Hallows; a desperate man's dream!"

"But they're real, or, at least, the Stone is."

"All three are real, and dangerous, and a lure for fools. And I was such a fool." I tried to protest here (was not Dumbledore the greatest sorcerer to ever live, excepting only Merlin? how could so great a man be called a fool, let alone by his own lips?), but he would not let me. "But you know, don't you? I have no secrets from you anymore. You know."

I felt like he'd confounded me, or maybe my last tenuous thread with reality had snapped and I'd gone mad, to wind up on a long-term care ward in St. Mungo's. A soft spray of water escaped the shower curtain and misted my head, distracting me further. "Er, no," I remonstrated the shade of the old man who might only exist in my mind, "I don't."

Blue eyes twinkled with hereto unseen life, "Master of death, Éléonore, master of Death! Was I better, ultimately, than Voldemort?"

"Of course," I said instantly. "You killed, yes, but not if you could avoid it. Voldemort – he's a sadist, or whatever the proper Freudian term is for people like him. I'd doubt he could even feel anger or joy when he tortures his victims, only I've felt it, or did before the tattoo I told you about. How could you even ask that?"

He sighed assenting, still kneeling before me, "Yet I too sought a way to conquer death."

"Not with Horcruces…" I defended, not knowing what he was talking about now.

"You are familiar, I believe, with 'The Tale of the Three Brothers,' are you not?"

Blinking again, "It's a fairy tale, Professor."

"The Elder Wand. The Resurrection Stone. The Cloak of Invisibility. Together, the Deathly Hallows, which, when united, will make the possessor the master of Death."

"Master of Death," I repeated slowly, as if I'd not heard him right. "But…"

"Think on it, Éléonore. Think on it with that brilliant mind of yours. Have you not seen a true Cloak of Invisibility? Not a simple travelling cloak, a Disillusionment Charm cast upon it, or else a Bedazzling Hex, or woven from Demiguise hair, but a true cloak. One that will not fade with the years, completely rendering the wearer invisible, enduring for all eternity – a constant and impenetrable concealment, no matter what spells are cast at it. Have you not seen such a cloak?"

I'd had my invisibility cloak for seven years, and it had been my father's twenty years previously, and his…

My mind still fought the possibility. "And the Elder Wand?"

He chuckled a sad, retrospective chuckle. "That Hallow is by far the easiest to trace, its history a bloody swath that cannot be ignored, if you know what you're looking for. From Antioch – the eldest of the three Perevell brothers – it fell through numerous hands… It's part in the slaughter of Emeric the Evil by Egbert the Egregious… How Loxias took the Deathstick from Barnabas Deverill, and then was lost to time, its bloody trail going cold, no one knowing whether it was Arcus or Livius who killed their father, Loxias, and took the wand from him… No one that is, Éléonore, but me." His voice was cold now, a taste of venom I was not accustomed to tainting it.

A non sequitur, "You know of my sister's ill health?" he asked.

I moved my head slightly, indicating the negative as my brain tried to catch onto what he was saying. If my cloak was the Cloak from the tale, then surely somebody looking to unite all three wouldn't have given it to me willingly, anonymously...

"It is well enough… Though you cannot despise me more then I despise myself, I do not know if I could stand to see such anger towards me in your eyes and know that, somehow, you still loved me. Your forgiveness would be more punishment then I could bear…

"Suffice to say, my sister Ariana was in poor health. My father gone, my mother gave up her own life to care for my sister.

"I hated Ariana for it.

"I was gifted, I was brilliant. I wanted to escape. I wanted to shine. I wanted glory – not the lifetime of service my sister would need and which I, the eldest of us three, would be doomed to give after she'd stolen the life from our sweet mother.

"Do not get me wrong, Éléonore. I loved them. I loved my parents. I loved my brother and sister, but I was selfish, more selfish than you, who has given more than we had right to ask, could possibly imagine."

But I had imagined.

"When my mother died, I was left with the responsibility of a damaged sister and wayward brother. In anger and bitterness, I returned to my village, my thoughts screaming at the waste of it all. How I would die the obscure death my mother had, worn before my time, a martyr to a cause no one believed in, and never accomplish any of the things it seemed my destiny to do. and then he came…" Oddly enough, Dumbledore's eyes softened here, seeming the most solid thing about him for a moment before they grew hard once more. "Grindelwald. You cannot imagine how his ideas caught me, inflamed me. Muggles forced into subservience. We wizards triumphant. Grindelwald and I, together the glorious leaders of the revolution that would, with the logic of a child, make up for what Muggles had done to my sister.

"They'd destroyed my family, and because of that I'd few scruples, and my conscious allowed itself to be assuaged with empty words. For the greater good! So wrapped up was I in my beautiful distraction I didn't allow myself to see what Gellert Grindelwald was, though I know now I must have known it even then… And the heart of our schemes the Deathly Hallows! Such a fascination for two boys with more knowledge then was prudent and less wisdom then we thought! Where he saw an unbeatable army, I admit to seeing only the return of my parents with that very stone you now hold, and a lifting of responsibility from my shoulders…"

He was quiet for a moment, and I tried to process all he'd said. Deathly Hallows? Real? And Dumbledore (dare I think it?) one of the many thralls to their legend? No, not possible! I refused to believe it, even though I could see myself in him, knowing well what a temptation the easy was when so much was put upon you… (If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - What would you tell him?)… Didn't Dumbledore, pinned down as I was now, deserve some childhood freedoms? What right had they to saddle him with such responsibility, or me? But, still, I could not see this gentle, grandfatherly soul questing after something like the Hallows. He was too good for something like that… and then I wondered if people thought the same about me.

"Invincible master of death, Grindelwald and Dumbledore! Two months of insanity, of cruel dreams, and neglect of the only two members of my family left to me. But reality, as it often does, returned, my brother shouting truths I'd worked so hard to ignore so that I would not forget them.

"We fought, Grindelwald joining quickly, partly to aid me and partly because of the poor temper I'd tried so hard to ignore. When we were done, Ariana lay on the floor… Which of us killed her, my sweet little sister who I hated and ignored when her only fault lay in being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I never learned. But Grindelwald ran… and I was left, once again, to bury the dead…

"…They say he showed remorse, in later years after I'd fought him and one, having learned, as I had, that he could not be trusted with power. Alone in his cell at Nurmengard, I hope he learned to feel horror and shame for what he'd done, so there'd be a chance, at least…" A chance for what he did not say, and he drifted off into memory.

After several minutes, during which I realized I'd been "in the shower" for a very long time, I managed to say something to this man, of whom I'd been dying to question for months. I could not help but feel a little guilty as I did so, his words of weight and the pain of responsibility still fresh on my mind. "Grindelwald found the Elder Wand. You beat him, and Draco killed you. Voldemort will kill Draco to get it, not knowing we buried it with you. He will come here for it, and soon."

Sadly, "Yes."

"I still haven't the slightest idea how to stop him, and if he comes here… if he comes here, people will surely die…"

As I trailed off, I loosed my clenching fists, raising them to my face, remembering too late the Stone clutched in one. "You are a true Gryffindor…" shade-Dumbledore whispered as he faded, leaving me to wonder if I'd just dreamed the whole thing up.

"The stress broke her," they'd say. I couldn't give them the satisfaction, could I?

I'll just repress this and go to bed. It'll be a silly dream by morning that I can forget about.

Hallows don't exist.

Evil doesn't exist.

The world is a decent, good place.

These lies playing in my head, I stumbled out of the bathroom and into bed.

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The next week my mind was obsessed with the Hallows, my mind running through the possibilities their existence presented.

The Cloak had fallen into my hands. No, not fallen… it was an inheritance. If it was a family heirloom of sorts, passed down to me from my father and his, was it not possible that it had, for however long it existed, been passed through so many hands to me from Ignotus Perevell. And the Stone! The awful, terrible, wondrous stone that could bring the dead to some seeming of life! So far I'd only used it to bring forth Dumbledore just that once. But the desire grew with each unbidden thought for the power of the Stone. It might not be life, but enough, perhaps, to say goodbye.

My parents, unknown to me but for their dying words – I could tell them how much I loved them, and missed them, and everything they had missed. How I longed, with words I could not express, to call them forth from the black recesses of the Stone and know that love I'd been denied. I'd so many questions to ask them, so much to-

But that was a pipe dream of the greatest size. How could I, knowing how they'd "return," knowing they'd not be themselves. Shadows little better then the echoes that Voldemort's wand bore that night in the graveyard. I couldn't just bring them back, not when I was responsible for their deaths. Why would they want to see me, except to listen to me beg their forgiveness for getting them killed? What daughter was I, to do that to them? I was nothing like they'd have wanted – those beautiful, perfect people, Light and good and so in love. McGonagall had told me about them, and how they'd be happy if I was happy, but… You can't just tell your dead father you married his childhood enemy and are pregnant with his second child. You can't just call up your parents and tell them you'd killed people, people with families and lives that I'd stolen from them just like Voldemort had stolen from them. You can't just tell them you poisoned your aunt, that you contemplated killing them even as you sat in their clean, Muggle living room, the visions of their torture both terribly cathartic and impossibly awful. I don't know much about parents; what little I've learned is parenting Claudia. But I imagine that I'd be more than a little mad if she told me she'd done the things I'd done, mad and angry and disappointed and I don't think I could have stood it to have these parents I've never known look at me with disappointment heavy in their eyes…

I admit to going through the next week like the somnambulant, no more aware of what was going on around me then anything I could imagine. Everything seemed so heavy, tangible after Dumbledore. My hands (simple and slim, nails a little jagged from nervous nail-biting, interestingly callous from Quidditch but beginning to soften from lack of practice; scarred a little from where the chipped Stone had drawn blood) seemed an impossible burden to bear, weighed down by flesh and bones and veins running like a poorly wired house throughout. The movement of my feet became an Olympian task, the mechanics of which I became painfully aware of: the ball of the femur swivelling in the hip joint as the knee bent, the angle of the ankle becoming obtuse as the toes push off; the pendulous motion of the opposite leg as it swung forward, heel thudding to the ground; the foot rocking forward, pressure moving from heel to toe as the process is repeated… The desks I sat at, the quills in my hands, the students I taught and the ones I had classes with, all seemed so painful, ultra-real, as if carved from stone. It made death seem tangible, and real.

Was it real? Was I going mad, seeing ghosts that were not there? I longed to ask Severus, but could not think of any way to bring up the Stone or shade-Dumbledore without Severus thinking I'd snapped under all the pressure, finally going mad. If the headmaster had been alive, I would have gone to him, but a painting and what the Stone might bring were all I had of him, and I despaired of asking such pseudo-real things to prove to me my sanity.

But still…

But still! Still I went through my days, teaching and attending classes and growing bigger every day. I scarcely noticed November sliding chilly into December, or the pre-end-of-term madness that overtook Hogwarts students and staff alike. However real I bloody-well felt, my mind seemed to be detached, my thoughts coming from a place slightly behind and to the left of where I should be, crossing into my body as if through a heavy veil. My thoughts, my words, my actions, all of these seemed to be clouded. Not to say I wasn't in control; I recognized myself, but felt strangely distant as I did every day activities: I read. I taught. I ruled the British Wizarding community from the school kitchen with my KoRT. I played with Claudia.

Remus remarked, somewhat sadly, at one point that week, that as I played on the floor of the nursery with Claudia, I looked as much like a child at play as my daughter did.

And then I woke up.

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It was 2 December, 1997. A Sunday. Hogwarts was buried in three feet of snow and, though the sky was clear now, the bitter chill of Scottish winters kept the banks as fresh and crisp as if it'd fallen only a moment, not days, before.

I had Claudia swaddled in her warmest clothes, I was sitting on comfortable rock by the lake edge, watching with one eye the students who'd transfigured ice skates try to skate the thoroughly frozen pond (occasionally laughing at those unfortunates whose skates turned back into trainers halfway across), while Claudia, playing in the flurry at my feet, remained the at the centre of the other. Severus sat beside me, a thermos of hot chocolate wedged in the small space between us. In the distance beyond, snow-frosted tent roofs rose, ribbons of grey smoke billowing with the wind.

Closing my eyes for a moment, I rested my head on my husbands shoulder and felt his arm wrap more tightly around my shoulders. It was the most intimate of PDAs – public displays of affection – he'd allow himself, and I didn't mind. My thoughts were, for the moment, centred on my love of him and our growing family. I'd been teasing him just a moment before on middle names for the baby. His eyebrows had gotten more and more expressive with each ridiculous name I suggested – which had been my intention all along – and, finally, letting loose a laugh that caused several of the older students in our general vicinity to stop in their tracks and fall upon the ice.

Paracelsus, who'd been draped around Claudia's shoulders like some snake-skin version of the fox furs women in old movies sometimes wear, poked a head up after a moment of comfortable silence, and asked me to tell him a story.

"What kind of story?" I hissed to the Runespoor.

"A story about you, Mère."

I was surprised and my tone must have shown it, for Severus looked up from the book he'd brought, curious. "About me?" I asked, explaining to my husband, "He wants me to tell him a story – about myself."

"Yesss. You have."

"The most exciting."

"Adventuresss. Tell us one."

All heads together, "Please."

I blinked at them.

Acel decided, after a long moment, that my blinking wasn't a good enough answer, and pulled his brothers with him as the Runespoor tried and failed to jump me.

"Acel, you stone-eating, egg-stealing-" Sus cursed beneath three feet of snow, Par joining in for once, milder oaths of his own drifting up to my ears, before I took pity on the creature and pulled it into my lap, or, rather, what pregnancy had left of it. The middle head looked so sad and pitiful; I lost self-control and asked her what story he'd like to hear.

Which is how I came to tell him about Riddle's diary and my battle with the Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets. When I came to the part of my tale (after many interruptions by varying heads and a quick English summary of what had just passed between us to the non-Parselmouth) where I pulled Gryffindor's sword from the Sorting Hat, something in me shuddered. As if my mind were a tightly stretched rubber band, my consciousness snapped back into my mind. Leaping to my feet, I paused only long enough to give Paracelsus a pat and Severus a peck on the cheek before racing off as fast as my pregnancy waddling would allow.

Dumbledore had said I was a true Gryffindor for pulling forth his Sword.

The Sword!

In more time than I could stand, I arrived at Dumble- no, McGonagall's office and breathlessly gave the gargoyle the password. I'd not realized I was leaning on it until it began to rise, stumbling awkwardly as I climbed onto the nearest stair, feeling searching for breath as it wound to the headmistress's office.

Basilisk venom destroyed the diary Horcrux.

I'd slain the Basilisk with the Sword of Gryffindor.

The Sword was made of goblin steel.

Steel was an alloy made of, mostly, iron.

Iron clung to all kinds of magic.

An object, made largely of iron, would take up whatever magic it was immersed in. An intensely magical object, such as Gryffindor's sword, would deeply drink from a magical wellspring, taking the magic deep within its blade.

I pounded on McGonagall's door, rushing inside when it flicked open of its own accord. "I need Gryffindor's sword," I panted, eyes darting about the room in search of its case.

The office, however, had changed a great deal since the headmaster's death, and the cabinets littered with small silver instruments and odd-looking thingamajigs now held books and photographs in mismatched frames. The one closest to me was an old black-and-white, taken in the late forties by the way the couple was dressed. A woman in her early twenties beamed up at a man not much older. After a moment's reflection, I realized the woman must have been McGonagall, the man with her the husband I'd occasionally heard the Order speak of. Edward, I believe his name was. Edward-something-or-other. She'd kept her maiden name. He didn't mind. He died of a heart attack the year before I started Hogwarts. Another, still older, seemed to be a portrait of her parents. A third was of the Quidditch team after we won the cup Third Year.

Looking up from her papers, looking over her glasses in a patented professorial way, she set down her quill. "Have a seat, Éléonore, and take a biscuit."

Automatically, I did both, the changes to the room falling on my like a great weight. I'd known Dumbledore was dead for months now – Herne and Hecate, I'd watched him die – but the replacement of his odd gadgets with these frozen fragments of another's life did something for me that not even his lifeless body had done. There was an air of something unfinished in the funeral, as if Dumbledore's part in the world was not yet done; I'd imagined that the headmaster's office had remained as it was, enshrined as we waited for our grandfather to rise from the dead and save us once more. Perhaps my avoidance of this office – not an easy thing, considering I was Professeure Snape now – was a type of denial of his death. The office had changed, Hogwarts grieved and moved on, and Dumbledore was entombed in white marble not far from the lakeshore I'd been sitting at minutes earlier, gone forever.

Or maybe not. I could use the Stone, bring him back again…

I shook my head furiously, refusing to let that thought gain ground. That Dumbledore wasn't real. Or, if he was, not real enough to bother with. After all, real people didn't make up conspiracy theories from children's stories…

"Did," the headmistress asked me, setting down her quill and looking quite pensive, "do you run all the way up here from the dungeons?"

Honestly, "No." Her lips pursed as I continued, "I was out by the lake."

"You're going to end up getting you and your baby killed if you keep doing things like this."

"Like what?"

"Exhausting yourself like this, teaching classes from balcony banisters," I was so going to kill Hermione when I was done here; who else would have told McGonagall about that? "The usual."

"I'm not suicidal. Can I have the Sword? I promise I'll get it back to you… eventually"

"You're not planning to decapitate any of the student body are you?"

"Er… no?" Not the greatest answer, but I ask you how exactly you go about explaining that you think the sword in question is now enchanted with the venom of the Basilisk you killed with it four-and-a-half years ago, and you need it so you can destroy the Horcrux hidden inside a box of tampons. The problem was best solved by not addressing it at all.

Perhaps because she'd taught the Marauders, she didn't ask me to elaborate. "You did find it; you might as well make use of it. The Sword's in the cabinet behind you." I waddled to it, pulling the doors open and quickly finding what I needed. Turning back to thank her, I was surprised at the next words to leave her mouth. "Are you prepared for your class Thursday evening?"

"I have a class Thursday evening?"

"Yes, the SE class Severus said you agreed to teach. I know it's a bit much to ask you to do, given the recent turn of events, but-"

My mind tried and failed to find this memory, or any words I could attach to "SE" that made sense. The only two options I could think of were sanitation engineering and special education. After a moment, I offered the latter of the two, causing her to sigh.

"Considering your recent… developments… I thought it of importance to have someone… explain certain… things to the students. And since Poppy has her hands full with the infirmary and you are the youngest female professor, I thought it might be more… helpful if such a class was taught by you."

"What? Oh- Oh!" Please tell me that McGonagall did not just say what I thought she did.

She had. "If it makes you feel any better," she offered as, blushing and exhausted, "Severus is 'offering' the boys' Sex Ed class."

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Thursday came more quickly then I could imagine, what time that wasn't filled with classes spent trying to figure out if, like I'd presumed, the Sword of Gryffindor had taken up the magic of the Basilisk venom, and if it was enough to destroy the fowl thing lurking in my vanity. My mind went less often to the thing hidden with it, the greater monster.

All the tests that Severus could think of, all the magic I could think to try, however, did not tell us anything about the Sword that we did not already know. Deduction told us the venom must be inside, but the only way to test my theory it was to slay something that sword alone could not kill.

Severus was leery, torn between the desire to see his former master destroyed and that of ensuring we didn't die in the process. Who knew, he said, what would happen if we were wrong, and the Sword was just a sword? We might inadvertently release the nth of Voldemort's soul trapped within. Tom Riddle, escaped from the diary, had nearly killed Ginny and set a Basilisk on the rest of the school, and that was a shadow of the weakest Horcrux. The diadem… Voldemort was a stronger, greater monster when he'd made this one and, though the sliver of soul was smaller, a shade of a twenty-something Dark Lord was something no one wanted to deal with, if we failed.

I, on the other hand, was ecstatic. I would have taken sword to diadem the moment I returned to our rooms if Severus hadn't already been there, untangling Claudia from the mess of jackets I'd forced upon her. At last – at last! – after so many months, something solid to show for what I'd done. I wasn't a failure, not at all – perhaps even a worthy heir to Dumbledore. I'd a Horcrux now and a way to destroy it, and so what if I'd not found the cup and the real locket yet and the other thing, I was on my way there. I wasn't without hope. I could do this. I could! I remembered the Elder Wand, Dumbledore's wand, and how, if the story was real, it was buried in that white marble tomb by the edge of the lake, so pure and cold, and how Voldemort wanted it. The villain would be coming to the school, my home, in attempt to solidify his power. He'd destroy my KoRT, he'd take the wand, and kill me and everyone I cared about for good measure, and then there'd be no way to stop him…

Still, a wait of less than a week was unbearable, and Severus said I was acting like a child waiting for Christmas to come. I didn't quite understand the analogy until later, remembering back to my classmates in happier days, but perhaps it was apt. Maybe not. Every step I drew closer to destroying the Horcruces, I drew a step closer to that inescapable moment of life-or-death, beyond which nothing was certain. My life was only measured by the extent of my delay, and the longer this grew, the less likely by success became. I wanted it to come, that final moment, when it was just me and whatever was left of his tattered, ruined soul. I wanted to look into his dark, blood-red eyes and have him meet mine, Killing Curse green. I wanted that moment of death or release, of future or ceasing to be. I wanted it. I wanted it to come so I could be free. I danger of destroying a Horcrux seemed almost paltry compared to that.

To be honest, it was the desire to do something – something tangible, besides give orders and make payroll arrangements and draw up plans for defence of the castle, always defence – that bit me hardest. For ages it seemed I'd done nothing but research and trivial theorizing. I may be a teacher and some semblance of a legislator by trade, but they were not my natural callings. I knew, deep in my blood, that I was a fighter. And I had fought – but not in so very long. And here was a war, itching for a hero, and where was I? Pregnant and teaching and making plans for battles I wouldn't figure into, except in the giving-orders sort of way. That's now how I fought, and it rubbed at me. My hands were itching to destroy something.

No, no, that wasn't right. I wanted to be in the midst of battle, where things were too crazed and every second a panting, heart-thudding, instinctual fight for survival. There was no thought, no planning, no fear, just adrenaline and the intimate knowledge of death. No Hallows, no Horcruces; nothing to worry about, excepting death. And I was strong, and skilled, and death would not take me easily. Such simplicity was what I truly wanted, where my feelings could vent and my worries fade in the heat of the moment.

The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled.

So it was that I arrived in the Room of Requirement thinking on ways to have Severus distracted and Claudia out of the way while I tried to destroy Ravenclaw's diadem with Gryffindor's sword. I was surprised to find most of those required to attend – McGonagall had made it mandatory for Third Years and up – already there, but only in a dim way. I can't believe Severus actually told McGonagall I'd do this. Though, granted, it'd probably be better this "Sex Ed" class coming from me rather then any of the other female professors – a woman older then your mother telling you some of these things. Still, my only comfort was knowing that Severus was in the same position with the boys… I hoped to God that this was McGonagall's idea of a joke on the two of us, or punishment, or whatever – no, that Sirius had taken Polyjuice to make him look like Severus and convinced her of the "necessity" of preventing more teenage pregnancies at Hogwarts. I'd tried to bring up the subject with Severus a couple times, but between the Sword and everything else, there hadn't really been time. I settled for thinking angry thoughts about him, before bursting into giggles imagining him in front of the majority of the male student body.

"Oh Ely, no," came a loud cry from somewhere I, too busy trying to figure out how you killed a diadem, couldn't tell. I tensed at the sound, and if my stomach had been aching less, I might have even ducked into a defensive crouch. It wasn't a moment later that I realized that it was Ginny calling to me as she hurried to my side, wrapping me in a quick, one-armed hug before grabbing both my hands in hers. "Please, please tell me they're not making you go through this torture too. It's not right – especially you. I mean," she let go of my hands long enough to gesture to my belly, "hello. You could practically teach the class."

"I-" I began, to be quickly cut off.

"Do you know who is? I figure it's probably going to be Madam Pomprey, but there's good money on McGonagall taking it too."

"It-"

"And then the boys! That's going to be awful! Everyone figures it's going to be Flitwick or, worse, S-"

Finally deciding rudeness was going to be the only way to break her exuberance, I interrupted. "Is there any money on me taking the class?"

"-and then- What? Er, some, I think. Rodmilla Vane is doing most the bet-taking; you'll probably want to ask her. Why?" I raised my eyebrow Snapishly at her. "I'm going to go change my bet," she whispered, stepping away before returning quickly. "The boys?"

"Severus," I told her, sotto voce.

A carefully caught snort of laughter, then, "'Kay. Thanks."

Vigilantly waiting until Ginny had laid down her money (at 9:2 against, I later learned) and lazily had found a seat, I walked into the pit of the lecture hall the Room of Requirement had become and began my stint on the seventh terrace of Mt. Purgatory. Which, I must admit, less emotionally damaging then any of the circles of Hell. Even if I was probably going to get a thousand copies of What's Happening to my Body and My Body, My Self for Christmas.


	30. In Which I am Visited by the Ghost of Valentine's Day Past

It took me until February to find a way.

It was Valentines Day, less then a ten-day until I was due, and I was once again cursing the Romans and their goat-fixation. It was, conveniently as one might imagine, on a Friday. And, try as we might to ignore the holiday, the first hour-and-a-half of our morning classes would be spent in a potions classroom, surrounded by hormonal seventeen-year-olds who were both acutely aware that not only were we the only married couple residing in the school, but we were also the only ones who could say they'd "taught" the entire pubescent population "Sex Ed."

Blushing madly as I dug in my dresser for a uniform shirt that didn't make me look like beached whale or feel like a beach ball, I remembered that terrible, terrible day…

…Mortified, I had made it through the purely reproductive aspects of "sexual intercourse" without blushing, trying to get done in as professional manner as possible. Id est, without scarring them too deeply with the details of childbirth while not seeming to condone unsafe sex, which, to be fair, might have been easier if Paracelsus hadn't decided to sing "Let's Do It, (Let's Fall In Love)" from his sheltered perch atop the projector screen.

"Birdsss do it, beesss do it; even educated fleasss do it. Let'sss do it: let'sss fall in love," Par sang just loud enough to annoy me as I tried, for the life of me, to answer a Hufflepuff Third Year who asked, so innocently that it should made illegal to be that naïve, how such a big thing as a baby came out of such a small opening. Even if I hadn't known poor Eunice was a Third Year, I could have told by her expression: whereas the Fourth and Fifth Years had been humiliated at having to attend this "class," the Third Years were openly appalled.

Acel, not to be outdone, "In Spain, the best upper setsss do it, Lithuaniansss, and let'sss do it. Let'sss do it: let'sss fall in love!" Sus asked the good lord why no one had smited his brothers yet. The first head, always the most pragmatic of the three, had told the third that, if they were struck down by some divine thunderbolt, surely the aim from the heavens couldn't be that specific, and so Sus would go down with them. Dreamy Acel sung the next verse in its entirety over the both of them: "The Dutch in old Amsterdam do it, not to mention the Finnsss. Folksss in Siam do it – think of Siamese twinsss."

I'd have given anything to smite the Runespoor myself as I answered little Eunice with a bit too much detail about cervical effacement and dilatation for a thirteen-year-old girl. It probably, in retrospect, hadn't helped that I'd put air quotes around such words as "effacement" and "parturition." Merlin help me, some of the Seventh Years were older then me. What did you expect?

One of the Sixth Year Ravenclaws – damn sixteen-year-olds - whispered something to her Slytherin friend beside her. Dinah and Judith Ainsworth. Cousins. Evil, in the teenage girl sort of way. Judith, the Ravenclaw, lazily raised a hand into the air after Eunice assured me she'd have no more questions for me, possibly ever again.

Acel had finished Cole Porter and dived right into his next choice of evening's entertainment: "I don't care who you are."

"Who you are!" Par went shrilly.

"Where you're from."

"Where you're from!"

"Asss long asss you love me."

"I don't-!"

I spared a glare towards the Runespoor, heads entangled in battle as Sus tried to murder his brothers for our own sanity. "If you don't stop singing that song right now, I am going to incarcerate you in a bubble and anchor you to the bottom of the lake until old age hasss made me too senile to convince the merpeople to keep you down below," then, sweetly, "You have a question, Judith?"

As innocently as Eunice, the bitch had asked, "How old were you, Professor, when you lost your virginity?"

Desperate, I'd wished I'd been eating something so I could have coked on it and saved myself from this torture. My face probably shown like a tomato, but, gods above and devils down below! "Er… fifteen." I'd promised to be honest, and it wasn't like people couldn't figure it out. Subtract my age from Claudia's…

"With Professor Snape?"

"Naturally."

"But I thought you were dating Philipp von Neipperg your Fifth Year?"

I'd groaned then, trying, unsuccessfully, to ignore Paracelsus, and tried explaining. "No, that was just something Sirius – my adoptive father – started up. When he found out I was, er, seeing Severus he rather, er, overreacted and tried to arrange a marriage on the continent for me rather then see me with his childhood rival… He actually tried to trick Fred Weasley into marrying me when he first- Sus! Where do you learn these words? Stop it now, all of you!" I probably wouldn't have said near that much if Acel hadn't been distracting me with something I thought was impossible – something worse then the Backstreet Boys:

"I'll make love to you, like you want me to."

"And I'll hold you tight, baby, all through the night."

"Why won't you mongrelsss die?"

"I'll make love to you when you want me to."

"And I will not let go 'til you tell me to."

"Do you two have any idea how bizarre two brothersss singing that noise soundsss?"

Dinah chose to ask the next question, "So how long have you two been together?"

Too busy trying to ignore the hell my Runespoor was putting me through, I didn't pause to think of a way to make the answer not sound bad for Severus. "Er, since the Third Task. I'm warning you; if you don't stop singing this instant…" Dimly, I registered Hermione torn between trying not to hear this and berating me for not having told her that detail. Ginny, beside her, flipped through her magazine idly, quite bored, but beginning to pay more attention as her yearmates asked some very… informative questions.

"One…"

"Girl relax, let'sss go slow. I ain't got nowhere to go. I'm just gonna concentrate on you."

"Two..."

"Girl, are you ready? It'sss goinna be a long night. Throw your clothesss on the floor; I'm gonna take my clothesss off too."

Perhaps the girl who asked the next question (and I never did figure out who) hadn't realized the seriousness of my anger at the snake now gracing the top of the projector screen, or maybe she thought it'd be funny to ask what she did just then. For, next thing I know, as I'm preparing to cast my spell, she asked a question that I can't even repeat in my mind without becoming light-headed from all the blood rushing to my skin. Let's just say it had to do with the specifics of how Claudia was conceived. Damn, I feel woozy now.

Needless to say, my arm had then jerked of its own accord, my spell letting loose and hitting the projector screen, still displaying its latest "helpful" diagram, causing the entire screen to shake and Paracelsus, unprepared, to fall to the ground with a thud. Which had stopped him from singing, but…

Finding a shirt, I tried to force those memories out of mind. I pulled it on as best I could, and waddled out to the living room. Severus was there, slipping a book back onto the shelves, and, noticed, wearing slightly more black then he usually did. Perhaps because of the redirected blood flow my memories had caused, I couldn't restrain a giggle at that. He lifted an eyebrow, and tried managed to gasp, "The one good thing about today is that, thankfully, all the Valentines Day chocolate is going to be half off tomorrow. I think that's the only thing keeping me going right now."

"I do believe we are quite wealthy enough to afford as much chocolate as you would like, whatever the cost. And the dentistry that will no doubt be required afterwards."

He was still too far away for me to easily hit him, so I settled for an innocent, "What? No lectures on how I should be eating healthy? You've given up on me, haven't you?" I put a hand to my mouth, as if to restrain false sobs.

I would have continued – though I'd no idea where I was going – but Severus instead closed the space between us and, with a not-so-gentle push, saw us both on the couch. "If you continue with that thought process, Éléonore, and force me to say anything that could be construed as belonging in a Harlequin novel, romantic comedy, or, Merlin forbid, a Valentine's Day card, I assure you teenagers with their thoughts circling the gutter will be the least of your problems."

Torn between amusement and rolling my eyes, I settled for kissing him, feeling the warm, smug note of surprise as my lips pressed hard against his. Then, pulling back suddenly, "God, I feel hot. Does it feel hot to you?" without waiting, "I don't honestly know what's worse: the first trimester, with the nausea; or the third, with the discomfort. I don't think I'm ever going to let you touch me again."

I didn't move, and our bodies were still touching as he commented, "Seems awfully unfair to you."

"You just don't want to going back to living like a monk again." I'd honestly no idea if there had been others before me, for him, and by all the gods and angels, I never wanted to know. According to the boys, he'd not answered Judith's question for them, and there was money on whether it was because he was too embarrassed to tell a group of teenagers that he'd been thirty-six or because he hadn't been and didn't want to face my wrath when I found out. Ginny had pestered me for the answer, having won forty-five galleons from Rodmilla that day before I snapped and told her that, over my dead body, no one was going to know but Severus.

"If our places were reversed, you'd not be able to fault me."

After a moment, "I love Claudia-Éléonore, and this one here, but I don't want anymore. Not for a while, at least… That won't be a problem, will it?" I was nervous, for no reason I could name, and as acutely aware of his dark, snatch-your-breath-away presence as I've ever been. My husband, my love, who'd given up so much for me; who felt guilty, at casual mentions of things like this (unplanned, unintended, accidental), for stealing my childhood, although I didn't think it stolen, not by him, and making me all these things to him when I should have been nothing more then his student, taking his NEWT Potions class because Slughorn was an idiot, one mildly hated for being my father's daughter, Sirius's godchild – words couldn't explain how he was all things to me: my only love, my most trusted friend, the man who I wanted before I knew what my want was, and who I honestly believed had saved me from despair and Darkness. Well, maybe not Darkness – Light Ladies don't have such thoughts as mine about the ingratitude and stupidity of their Seventh Year students, or entertain thoughts of torture on family members who they'd poisoned but had yet, even now, eight months later, to drop dead – but from the deepest Dark. I might be a monster, but at least I knew love and passion and his impossible, impractical grace. That had to make me better.

Concern bleeding from him, though I doubted anyone else in the world would take his tone as anything worried or even loving, "Why would it be a problem, Éléonore? You're my wife, not my whore. I'll not force you to anything against your will."

"Except Potions homework," I muttered barely loudly enough to be heard, frowning at the memory of the essay I still had to do before beginning maternity leave. A moment later, "It could be… problematic though, considering our problem with contraceptive potions," – how they didn't seem to work, - "and what some would probably call a 'sexual addiction'…"

He guffawed – actually, literally, guffawed – at this. "We'll find something," he promised, and then told me how, if we didn't get to breakfast soon, people would begin to talk.

Not liking where this teasing had gone, I sulked as he stood up. "Tonks is pregnant," seven months, more or less, and going through mood swings faster then Paracelsus could change radio stations, largely because the only people she could morph into while pregnant were other pregnant people, which were in limited supply in the places she would have otherwise, spied and, thusly, felt rather useless, "make fun of her instead." And then, only pausing long enough to tell him I'd forgotten something and follow him up in a minute, imitating a penguin, I headed back into the bedroom.

Lying back on the comfortable, familiar bed, I tried to get my emotions back in order. I don't why his comment, innocent enough, had irritated me so. Everything was irritating me, a hormonal side effect, I figured, fuelled by stress and fear. Months had passed since I'd recovered the Sword, but still I was no closer to learning its secrets then I'd been that first day, and as each day passed, the familiar tang of hopelessness had sunk back into my weary bones.

I could ask Dumbledore…

But no. I couldn't go that route. He wasn't real. He was just a shadow. Not real. A Perevell had died because he'd believed in such false dreams. I wasn't weak. I didn't need to give into such longing…

But I did! I did! (Those thoughts screamed so loudly, and with such force, in my mind that I couldn't control the emotion, and tears rushed unbidden to my eyes, welling there for no reason I allowed myself to believe was worth this show of weakness.) What else was I going to do? I had searched among books, tumbled upon word after word, seeking the secret knowledge – what Dumbledore knew, what he'd found this same way – that I was too weak or unworthy to find. But there was nothing! Nothing! Not a word, not a scrap, and with access to books no normal child had, it became almost certain to me that such knowledge, if it existed, was not written down. How did you destroy Horcruces when the only people in the world who believed in them were your husband, who might have only believed for your sake, and the bastard who'd made them? If you weren't willing to take a chance…

But could I? Should I? It needed to be done, but you didn't destroy jewellery by cutting it up with a poisoned sword. No, you pulled out the gems and broke them, crushing them beneath great weight and scattering the powder; you melted the metals, adding pure elements into the alloys until they burned clean… Hellfire could do the job, but not without great risk, and removing all the usual fuels from an area was no guarantee to stopping the spread of a magical fire. I couldn't risk Hogwarts, my home, that way. Saint Mungo's and HQ – the only other locals I could make it to without suspicion, especially when pregnancy by necessity excluded the easiest and most secretive forms of travel – I couldn't risk either, not with the war going on. I'd no other options, besides a blade that mightn't even be poisoned.

Merlin, if only I knew how Dumbledore had done it! Broken the ring, that is… the only flaw in it, before I'd broken it, was the crack through its night-black stone. Maybe just cracking one of the stones on the diadem – but there were several, which one? The central, maybe, but maybe Voldemort had learned some cunning between the diary and the diadem, and put it in another. Or maybe you couldn't control it, and soul clung to whatever was strongest. What jewel contained the most carbon? Were there any diamonds on it? I don't recall…

He could have told me! He should have told me. Maybe he would have, if Draco with his stupid let's-all-try-to-kill-Éléonore,-why-don't-we plan hadn't interfered! Damn him! Both of them, Draco to the lowest of the low; Dumbledore… he'd tried so very hard…

What was trying, in the end? Trying was well and good, but if you don't succeed, you don't live, and it's all for nothing. It can't just all be for nothing, this battle, this life, this world. There just can't not be a way to destroy them. There has to be one, but I've looked and looked and failed. I'm a failure! A disappointment! A teenage mother, a child bride, whose only worth is what I can do for everybody else and while Severus may love me, and may have saved me, and may have taken me into his arms and held me as no one in my life that I can remember has ever held me, making me safe, even for such a little time, even Dumbledore was using me in the end. To find the Horcruces, to fight his battles. He abandoned me!

Merlin, why did he abandon me? (Tears were streaming full now, and I was shuddering without making a sound.) …We have not been… picked out… simply to be abandoned… set loose to find our way… We are entitled to some direction… I would have thought… But what direction did I have? A diadem in my vanity, a Hallow in a ring, a cup somewhere on this isle I nominally ruled, and a stolen locket, too, and something else. Something unknown, possibly something of Gryffindor's, the last founder, if anything existed of his besides the Sword. Oh, yes, I'd a sword, which I didn't know how to use.

There wasn't a choice, you see. Time, it wasn't on our side. Oh, I know. I know, I know, I know what they say: …neither good nor evil can last for ever; and so it follows that as evil has lasted a long time, good must now be close at hand… But it was too long in coming and I'd Claudia to think of, and her yet-born brother or sister who I didn't know if I could love properly after all this hate, and Severus, and Hogwarts, and all of Britain. I couldn't just wait around anymore, waiting for something, anything to happen which might save us all. Waiting got us nowhere. I had to act.

I had to.

That thought clearly formed, I went to the apartment door and locked it with key and spell. No one could enter unless I let them. Pausing, the idea already beginning to ring stupid in my mind, I turned back to the door, hissing loud enough for Archimedes to know I didn't want anyone entering for an hour, not even Severus, I rushed to check the nursery. Winky had taken Claudia outside to enjoy the unusually sunny day before the teenage lovebirds got their hands on it, or so it seemed, and so the room was empty. No one to get hurt, if things went wrong…

No! Nothing would go wrong. It was perfect, my plan. Simple. And, if it went wrong, I was nearly full term; they could save the baby… and, if they couldn't, at least Claudia was safe…

Claudia-Éléonore Séléné Snape… she'd said her first word last week. It was "Mummy." I don't think I've ever been prouder, or happier. Severus, immersed with his potions in the next room, wasn't there, so I hurriedly called him from the next room and tried to get my baby to say it again. She did, and he'd struggled to maintain a straight face. To me, what had sounded like perfect English had been a clear and distinct hiss… at least Paracelsus wouldn't be without company, if…

I entered the bathroom and locked it before kneeling like the penitent before a shrine at the end of the vanity. Opening the cabinet, I pulled the naked Sword from its undignified position and, with the hem of my pooled skirt, polished its length. Along the blade edge were words, carefully translated, in old Gaelic:

Forged and Fated to Kill with Subtle Blade, Take Ye Damned Comfort: I am Eversharp

 

"I thank your maker for that," I whispered, its pummel with sleeping, ruby eye almost to my mouth as I cleaned its pointed end. I set it carefully beside me, not wanting to cut myself, having noting that even the light polish I'd given it had left parallel slices in the fabric, and reached in farther for the hidden treasure.

I ignored the useless locket with its false, leadless note. I even tried to ignore it, but my hands knew the desire I held and ghosted over it of their own accord, betraying my already broken and frantic mind. Its Dark coolness felt pleasant to my skin, as if I were running a fever and it was a moistened pad to place to my forehead.

That was all it took, and I broke, taking it into my curved palm once again. Suddenly it didn't matter that I was trying to be strong, that it was madness to indulge in what I was doing, only that I had him there, to help me, and so help me God I could stop before it became too much. I could stop whenever I wanted – this was magic, not an addiction, and, besides, I'd Severus to run to when it grew to be to strong. It was my own choice… I pressed it tight into the sensitive skin and tried not to feel the tingling lightness, the ease of relief that loosed itself from somewhere between my lungs. I tore off the loosened hem of my skirt and used it to tie, brace-like, the stone into my clutching palm.

The diadem came as almost an afterthought, placed on the titled floor a few feet from me, turning around to see him not quite there, caught shade-like between man and ghost. "Hello, Grandfather," I breathed, words not reaching my own ears. They were too busy searching the silence, probing out as far as their mortal might could, finding fear in the whisper of water through pipes; in the high-pitched ring that, had I not known better, I would have called electricity streaming along shining wires. To my eyes, too, the tiles seemed over-white, my skirt too dark.

"Éléonore," he said in greeting, disappointment colouring his words.

"Don't be like that, please don't. I need to know if this will work. And, if not, what will. It's February, Albus. He's not a patient man. He'll come for the Wand soon. The murders of Muggles and Muggle-borns have picked up, too. St. Mungo's is filled to the brim with refugees and the injured. France and Russia are sending us medical supplies, but it's not going to last forever. He's gained more followers, and whether it's those who followed him before and were smart enough to hide, or those following because others follow, or those spelled into compliance, he's growing more powerful. I don't know what else to do, but this. I've got to do this."

"Are you sure about what you are about to do, Éléonore?"

"Not at all, but what other choice do I have?"

"You could not do this."

Suddenly angry, "Why the hell not?" I shouted, my voice echoing off every available surface, hurtling back at me – at him – like daggers. "You left me here. You told me what I had to do. He took everything from me, Albus. Give me a moment, and I'll find a way to blame him for cancer and rising oil prices too. I'm going to take such twisted pleasure in killing him I might use the Stone to bring him back and do it again. So don't the hell tell me I can't do this. Just tell me if the Sword'll work… Tell me how to kill the thing."

"Godric Gryffindor's sword, when you slew the Basilisk, took up its poison-"

His blessing halfway given, my free hand snatched up the blade, with strength of the wrist hereto unknown quickly snapped it into position above, then through, the centre of the diadem. It was silver, made of filigree, with several tiny, blue stones set into it. A dark, deep blue sapphire graced this central point and the blade, which had sank as if through butter the silver decoration above, jagged on it. Blackness, darker then a moonless night, billowed as, with sheer force of will, I willed the blade downwards. A sick, nails-on-the-chalkboard shriek ripped from the sapphire, growing louder and louder with each second, until it seemed that the noise, however horrid and discordant, was all that existed. I wanted to clasp my hands to my ears, rip them off if necessary, anything to block the sound. But I knew I couldn't. I knew if I stopped now the Sword would clatter free, and I'd fall, and I'd not be able to find it again the growing darkness. The sound would block everything, until I couldn't think couldn't see couldn't breathe from the pain of it all. I'd struggle to stop it, clawing anything and everything in hopes of silencing it, I knew I would, and in the end succumb to madness. I couldn't let that happen. I had to hold on, as tight as I could, and not let go. I wasn't strong enough, but I had to be… Perhaps I should have cast an augmentative spell on myself before beginning, to give me strength- but no. It was going through the stone, feeling the consistency of wet cement to my poor hands. The noise grew worse… and the coldness, so like that of the cave, making me shiver with both fear and, disgustingly, delight.

It moved of its own accord, the blackness. Not cloud or haze, I could only think of it as drawn from some patch of starless sky. It pooled in the middle of the diadem, then seemed to form the shape of feet, then legs, and both fear and sick anticipation put new strength into weak muscles. The sound was pitching lower, less of a shriek then a scream. It burned my ears, my eyes; my throat. And yet I found myself fighting the urge to laugh, the sound catching in my throat and becoming animaline, the sick and feral growl of the hunter finding its lethal prey joining the monster's howl-

-and then it was through, the unexpected lessening of pressure on the blade shocking me, and it dipped into the tiles below – a rough, gouging sound that stung me far less then the sudden silence that immediately preceded it.

The legs were fully formed now, more and more darkness coming forth from the depths of nothingness and taking shape – thighs, torso, pale hands. There was no thought, I was beyond it at this point, just instinct.

I could handle instinct.

The Sword was heavy and embedded in the tiles, and my hands weak, not accustomed to this peculiar burden. I couldn't pull the Sword free, it was stuck fast, and the creature of blackness was nearly fully formed. My grip was awkward, unpractised, and further hindered by the Stone bound to one hand and the ringing silence in my ears. Giving a final tug, I knew I'd failed, and powerlessness threatened to overcome me. I'd been foolish, and knew it-

But I could still fight.

I loosened the hilt, hands sweaty and fumbling as they dug in my robe for my wand. I could see the face now – Herne and Hecate, that unforgettable face, those red slits of eyes, those thin, cruel lips. His nose was humanoid enough, but oddly flat. A twisted, Dark smile began to contort the face still further-

And then I found it, and whipped it out. The curse came before I could make a choice on what I needed – some type of light, to defeat the darkness? Fire? Ice? – the Killing Curse flew from my lips and I saw the sick light flashing and the rush of wind or wings-

Then it was gone. The bathroom was just that, a bathroom. Sure, a sword was stuck into its floor and an ancient, now tarnished, crown lay broken amidst the tiles, tiny sapphires falling out of crumbling settings, but it was a bathroom again. Not a battle field.

I turned to Dumbledore, laughing uproariously. I'd done it! I'd done it! I sounded hysterical, but I couldn't help myself. Do you even begin to understand how wonderful it was? I was Atlas, and I was free – somewhat – without having shrugged! I'd succeeded. I'd done it, defeated another part of Tommy Riddle-

And was still miles away from defeating the monster. There was his physical body, for one, the real locket and something else for another two, and the fact that I'd not the slightest idea where said locket and something else were just to round out the top five of my troubles.

I crashed from my cloud, then rose again, my emotions going haywire, laughing and sobbing at the same time, and Dumbledore, if he really was there, not doing or saying anything… Disgust joined the fray, and I found myself hastily pulling my hand from the bandage I'd made to hold the Stone to my flesh. I had to get out of here, and calm down, and- and-

-I could see him, the lines of his face growing deeper, worry cementing his features-

I heard the clock chime and, looking at it absurdly (my mind not quite realizing what it was, or why it would choose to chime this then), a different fear went through me. "Oh my God, I'm late for Potions," I sputtered, which was quickly followed by a peculiar, "Oh!" I felt my body go slack and my eyes roll back into their sockets, the whispering sound in my ears as I fell to the floor sounding so much like the rush of an Arvada Keravada…

Paracelsus was resting on my chest, his right head poking at my nose, when I awoke sometime later. It couldn't have been more then twenty minutes, for no one had come looking for me that I could tell, and, as Acel was in the middle of singing the guitar solo of "Freebird" and not being accosted by some lucky, non-Parselmouth for it, I gathered that no one was around. A kind person would have stopped the racket the Runespoor had somehow made of Jimi Hendrix, thinking he or she was overhearing an axe-murder-in-progress. "Mère!" Par shouted over his brother's racket, "we were so!"

"…please don't take it badly, 'cause Lord knowsss I'm to blame…"

"worried about you. Now tell Acel to shut up and get better."

Par, who'd been beating Acel with the side of his head while Sus talked to me, spoke up then, allowing Sus to resume his attack, "Yea, Mère. You look like three-week-old hell warmed over."

"Why, thank you so very much Par. I'd have never have guessed that, given as how I feel like a slice of three-week-old hell. Thank you so very much for your helpfulnessss."

Gravely, "You're welcome," he responded, then gave a double flick of his head that I took to mean, "Well, get a move on."

"…if I stayed here with you, girl, thingsss just couldn't be the same. 'Cause I'm asss free as a bird now and this bird you'll never change…"

"I keep praying," I groaned, watching the Runespoor topple as I tried to sit up, each of his heads trying to keep from being the one to hit the floor and none of them succeeding, "that one day you'll moult and be lessss annoying."

"Yesss, of course, Mère. And then the dungeon-man will sprout wingsss and start speaking in rhymesss, and-"

"Shut up, Susss."

"Who're you telling to shut up, Par? Acel'sss the one being an idiot, and you only encourage him."

Holding his head high, "Someone shouldn't trample on his dreamsss, even if they're stupid."

"I'm right here guysss: I can hear the both of you."

They continued to annoy him, "You're just jealousss because I got the looksss and Acel got the talent and you got stuck with the short end of the ugly stick."

"Who you calling ugly? I'd ask if you'd looked in a mirror lately, but, asss I've not seen any broken onesss around…"

I groaned again, and this time not because of the aching protestations of my bones, though they were still unpleasant in the extreme. "I'm not so lucky asss to have missed classesss today, am I?"

"If you do not like classesss, do not take them, Mère."

"It'sss not that simple-"

"Why not?"

"Because."

"Because why?" I must be like fly paper for idiots or something – 'cause how else do you explain how I get put into these situations?

Still, it was too late for me to make an appearance at Potions, and the logical part of me (which resented having been so long ignored) realized Severus was probably not going to be happy I put myself in danger that way without telling him first. I'd tell him later, but not now, when it would just cause him to get retrospectively overprotective and cause no end of discomfort for the two of us, what with classes for each of us to teach… No, it'd be best to tell him later. Later, when we could both let our emotions reign over us, not now when to loose ourselves would open us to so many pains…

That first kiss was so vivid in my mind, still bubbling over from the intensity of my joy at being alive. The taste of his lips in my memory was more then I could take…

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…Sirius was sitting in the diver's seat of Fulvia, his Rolls-Royce Corniche, playing angrily with the radio when I came out of the house. I knew, from the set of his face and the anger in his movements, he was trying to calm down, but adoptive fathers, or so I've heard, didn't take well to hearing their daughters had spent the better part of ten years in a cupboard. I could hear the music from the door, loudly playing, jerking slightly as he jammed the radio presets, changing the song almost quicker then the sound could make it to me. At last, seemingly giving up and settling for what he'd found, he leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes, hands clutching the bottom of the steering wheel tightly, and deep, forced breaths shaking his entire body.

The rest of our group wasn't much better. Tonks was angrily pacing by the car, probably wishing she could spell all Petunia's rose bushes into flamingos or something else idiotic as she tried to convince herself it wasn't worth the paperwork. Remus was sitting in the passenger's side of the Corniche, a growl trying to die in his throat, while Fleur was standing nearby, gentling rocking Claudia, as if to console her, though it was by far the Frenchwoman and not the baby that needed consoling.

Severus was waiting for me by the door. As I closed it behind me, an odd sense of déjà vu overcame me, one I couldn't quite place and found odd because nothing like this had, to my knowledge, happened to me before. I let go of the thought as quick as my frozen, unmoving mind would allow and buried myself in my husband's shoulder. I didn't like the monster I was becoming…

I didn't know what was going on around me, only that I was fighting the dual desires to go back and finish the job I'd left undone at Azkaban South or else break down at the thought of the monster I was becoming. How long until word came that my aunt was dead? One of the many interesting side effects of being married to Severus was knowledge of some intensely disturbing poisons. Then again, being married to me probably gave him some as equally interesting knowledge of some spells that only the more erudite Death Eaters had ever come across…

Her death could simulate a heart attack, a stroke; an ancient, long forgotten plague; there were others still that could make her body too bruised and broken to house her soul or slice her skin with internal knives; it could wait, lurking, and kill her years from now, like some lurking disease; it could be killing her now, her veins bursting, arterial blood spraying across the clean whiteness of her living room… My mind could play images that no one should ever see. Though Claudia was in my arms again and I was in Severus as we drove – I don't know how long for, only that it was seemingly a lifetime before I looked up and knew that we were still not at HQ, or even near London… But it couldn't have been that long, that song was still playing in the background, and Claudia had yet to make a noise…

I'd just murdered my aunt. Maybe she wasn't dead yet, but she was dying all the same. I'd taken what I'd wanted from her and Dudley and left her to die. I'd killed in self-defence, but never…

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…he moved with a fierce sense of possession over me, kissing me with an obstinacy that made it difficult to remember to breathe when our lips parted. All I wanted was him, and he, it seemed, had forgotten his self-imposed morals to allow himself this happiness in a world so full of death and war and pain…

My towel long forgotten, our bare bodies struggled to move even closer to each other. The sensations were so overwhelming… one moment it was all I could do to concentrate on his tongue, warm in my mouth, and the lust-stoked pressure on my mouth that I was trying my hardest to offer back… the next it was on his hand at my hip, or mine at his, or tangled in his hair… but then his mouth was no longer on mine, but devouring my neck, my breasts, the tender skin of my inner thigh, and it was all I could think of, except that I wanted him so badly… and then, with force I did not know I had, pulling my mouth back to mine again, and how that was all it took, and he was in me, and I could forget everything except him because he was my world and I was his and there was nothing outside of us and I didn't have to worry about life or death or prophesy or anything else…

I moaned his name – far more then once – and when he moved to pull back, I pulled him closer, and, this time, he did not let go…

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

…I think I was hyperventilating. No, wait, I am. I am defiantly hyperventilating…

In a panic, I jump up, surprised to find myself caught in a tangle of sterile hospital blankets rather then, well, I don't know what, only that it wasn't what I expected. No winding cloth. No funeral shroud. I wasn't dead. I wasn't trapped somewhere. I was at Hogwarts – yes, Hogwarts. The slight, almost electrical buzz in the back of my head; the scent of antiseptics and potions – nothing else was like Hogwarts.

I'd just watched my parents' murderer rise from the dead and I was alone… and scared… not just for me, but Sna-Severus. It was all my fault that he'd come back, and now he was putting his life on the line to spy…

It was all my fault… I should have killed Voldemort on that field, should have died instead…

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…It was dark in the showers and the door was locked. The stream of water that fell over me, and I prayed I would drown. I'd turned on the radio to drown out the sound of my sobs, and it was playing loudly, echoing in the titled room but did nothing to calm me. For one beautiful, glorious half-hour, I'd believed that I wouldn't have to return to my prison. But like all things in my life, it was too good to be true…

I should have just let them kill Wormtail! Double jeopardy would have kept Sirius out of jail, and I'd have had a family at last – but no, I had to be noble. I had to let justice be carried out – when Sirius, my godfather, who could have saved me and loved me and so much more, had been banished to the real Azkaban in the name of justice. But how could I believe in justice now that I knew what justice had done to Sirius?

Justice! How had I ever deluded myself into believing in justice? What justice was there in my parents dying? What about the cupboard? What justice was there then, in all the years before I knew about Hogwarts? And what about now? Dumbledore knew Sirius was innocent but did nothing – nothing legally, that is, though I appreciate that he kept him from having his soul sucked out – where was the justice in that?

I was all alone again, and it hurt so bad…

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…So this is what dying was like… At least it didn't hurt… I always thought it must hurt, or else people wouldn't be so afraid of it. But this was nothing, just a heavy sleepiness, and, when I woke up, I'd be with Mum and Dad… It's no so bad at all…

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

…but there was no such thing as magic… wasn't there?

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

"…Paracelsusss…" I hissed faintly, feeling dizzy and nauseous as I struggled to find the bed, to lay down on its blissful softness, as if the memories wracking my mind against my will would somehow be lessoned if I could just rest upon it. My head pounded, worse then any time Voldemort had ever been in my mind, if that was possible, and I felt sick and confused and I couldn't figure out what was going on. Every time I seemed close, I'd fall back into my plethora of nightmarish memories. "…Get Severusss…"

"Why? Isss it the?"

"Baby? Human egg-laying isss so."

"Strange. Idiot, thisss isn't egg-laying: Mère'sss not well. Come on. Let'sss find the dungeon-man."

"Can we call him Père?" Acel asked as they slithered out of the room.

Before I could give him an answer, I fell into the memories again… There… there had to be a… a safeguard… on… on the… diadem! Some sort of… reason why I couldn't think clearly…

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

I remembered the first time I'd been made to cook breakfast, when I could barely reach the cooker at all, and I'd burned my hand so badly I'd sacrificed my last decent shirt to make a tourniquet for it. Petunia had gotten so angry, because the blood wouldn't come out and she'd actually had to buy me clothes so the teacher wouldn't realize I was wearing the same thing to school every day.

I remembered that first Potions lesson with Severus, and how much anger he'd felt towards me, all because I was my father's child. He'd assumed… he'd told me so many things he'd assumed, and how I'd broken that delusion for him long before he ever came to Azkaban South. He was so strange, in that early memory, not my Severus at all, but something… other. Foreign. How strange the thought that five years time from then we would be lovers! How strange the thought that I'd once hated him… I could not imagine a life without him now.

I remembered our wedding, in more vivid detail then I thought I had of the blur that was that day. The rush of colours and sounds… the bizarre reception in L'Orangerie, everything so strained between my father and my husband, only Severus knowing then I was pregnant with Claudia, no one knowing why we wouldn't wait until after I'd graduated – or even Christmas – to marry. A few of the hotels other guests wondered who we were, this strange wedding party, and whispering from the more gossipy that the groom was the Earl Dover, a rather obscure noble given his family's holding, but rich enough to buy a small country; the bride (or so they would put it) was a young French thing, just out of school, from good stock and (as if this made up for any of my deficiencies) quite rich herself. A winemaker, or from a family of them. Rumour had it that she was somebody, at least, among whoever her people were. How odd they were all subdued – probably a shotgun wedding, or something of the sort. Her father didn't look to happy at all, did he?

I remembered my first day of school, when that awful teacher had given me that awful nickname that was to stick with me for years… It'd been so awful. I'd been so excited to get to go somewhere, and that I'd a backpack and crayons to call my own, even if they weren't new, and there was recess where I could play and not have to worry about chores… But, of course, I'd managed to wind up in the same class as Dudley, and he'd made them hate me so, and Petunia had gone up to the teacher and told her, loud enough for the other mum's to hear, that I was a little slow, and not to bother with me if I fell behind. The government was making them put me in school now, and she and Vernon were just waiting for a spot to open up at the grammar for the 'special' children so I could get the education I 'needed.' I didn't know what it meant at the time, only that it meant that I was alone, again, and I' always would be.

I remembered Voldemort's resurrection several times, my mind seeming to come back to that battle over and over again, until there was not a blade of grass that I did not know the movements of upon that cemetery field.

I remembered farther back still, to when I was a small child. I thought I even remembered that night, but it might have just been a dream… He wasn't one for sneaking in through cellars or back windows. No. He'd apparated a little down the road, just close enough for the crack to be heard – a car backfiring, though the cottage was the only thing down this road for miles? Sirius, coming to visit, despite it being so late? It was Halloween. It might've even just been some Muggle kids kicking tin cans; Voldemort was powerful. He didn't need to make a sound – and wondered about. There was a sharp intake of fear, a tightening of the chest, and then, after a long moment, when Mum and Dad realized what they were being silly – or so they thought – the relieved, almost uplifting release of breath. Oh, the betrayals of our bodies to our minds! They should have known better then to deny the instincts that had kept humanity alive for so many millennia… But I could play the "what if?" game better then anybody. They were in the living room, very country house but tasteful enough for that sort of thing (though the colours! I don't know if I'd ever grow to understand the pureblood wizard's taste for bright, clashing colours and flashing patterns, not if I live a hundred years), my parents and baby me when they heard the crunch of footsteps on gravel walk. He could have silenced them, but chose not to. He wanted that fear. He thrived off of it. Hearing that quiet, sharp shuffle of stones without a friendly warning call was enough… It was then my father called out, the unpleasant realization of his own imminent demise choking him not nearly as much as his worry for his wife, my mother, and myself. Dad told Mum to take me and run… but their own anti-apparition and –portkey wards were working against them – the irony of Death, that their murderer would not come barging in, wands and canons blaring, but silently. Though they had defied him thrice, I know not how, and defiance was nothing compared to battling such a powerful foe. Mum could run, but he would catch her. She knew this, and had only the hope that the alarm wards had been tripped by Voldemort's entrance that she and the baby that was me would survive. So she ran to my nursery, barricading us in with every charm and curse she knew, sobbing wildly to the sound of her husband being murdered downstairs… It was horrible. I didn't know him, but he was my father. Her husband. And she was trying to hide out the storm with baby me in my nursery. I think, for a moment, I hated her. If it had been Severus and I in their positions, I would have done everything I could to save him… maybe even at Claudia's expense. I do not know. I've never been put in that position. But, still, even when the sound of fighting subsided downstairs and she knew her husband was dead, and that the heavy tread upon the stairs was not that of salvation but Death that no Cloak of Invisibility could have saved her from that destiny, even if she'd had it, still she cast spells and wards at the doors. She wasn't a damsel to be saved, but Mum knew she couldn't stop him herself. Voldemort pounded on the door, once, twice – then it splintered violently as a hex blasted it in. Mum cradled baby me next to her chest, to protect me, and hardly made a sound even as shards inches long pierced her back. The metallic scent of blood pervaded memory as Mum fell down to her knees, stunned, but still cradling the baby I was to her, protecting me… "Not Ely, not Ely, please not Ely!" Mum begged the monster, forcing me behind her as she turned to face her assailant. Oh how well I knew what came next!

"Stand aside, you silly girl… stand aside, now…"

"Not Ely, please no, take me, kill me instead- Not Ely! Please… have mercy… have mercy…" But there was no mercy. A man who killed his own father did not know mercy. A boy who terrorized two Muggle orphans when but a boy did not understand compassion. The slaughterer of an old, lonely woman did not value kindness, or sympathy, or love. My poor mother must have known this, but hoped against hope – even as I, in a sick way, knowing I was the baby she fought to protect, wanted her to let him kill the baby so that she could go on and live and be the Mind Healer she wanted to be, have other green-eyed babies – that he would take the trade and leave me be after killing her. A laugh, a whisper of green light, and then the thud as cold body hit hard floor. The wand turned on me, the dark yellow wood hiding the core feather that would one day be the brother mine. Oh this man, this twisted remnant of a man! So much hatred! So much anger – and fear! Maybe if his mum had lived, maybe if his dad had stayed with for his sake alone, maybe if he'd been in a better orphanage then St. Giles, maybe, maybe… but no. This man had never known love or hatred, and so had lived in a sea of indifference until it was too late to save him from himself… All he wanted was life everlasting, a life which he'd never be able to live, soul so shredded, as anything more then a shadow of itself. He'd kill anything in his way. And I was in his way. The twisting, sick light again… and it hit the baby, it hit me. Right in the forehead. I should have fallen over, dead, eyes rolling into the back of my baby head as I fell back, cold, fat little baby arms to move no more.

But I didn't. I just cried in fright as the light hit me. And it was Voldemort who fell to the ground, body burning as it went (a sick smell of burnt hair and snakeskin catching in my memory's nose). The house, for no readily available reason, shook wildly, and began to burn too. Baby me cried and cried. But no one came, and I fell asleep in the rubble that had once been my home.

Sometimes I remembered it differently. Sometimes it was "Harry" and not "Ely" that Mum cried. Sometimes I thought it was Harry that I saw, not me.

But sometimes I broke through the haze. I saw reality, or very close to it, and thought I'd fallen off the bed. I thought days had passed, and Severus had never come for me. It was a scary thought, one I didn't like to believe in, but I couldn't stop myself, and with every worry the memories grew worse, until I watched my parents' murders over and over again, and knew every squeak of the stairs and every curse. There was a sense of inevitability in it. I should have died then, that I shouldn't have survived the un-survivable curse.

"I have many questions for you, Harry Potter," the monster asked, or seemed to, climbing the stairs to kill Mum once again.

The baby me, as the door splintered in, asked, "Like what?" or, again, seemed to. I was obviously loosing my mind. That was the only explanation. And I felt so weak… How long had I been out? A day, a week, a year? Even if Severus had found me, how would he know what had happened? He couldn't ask Paracelsus –well, he could, but he wouldn't understand the answer. The Runespoor couldn't write, and Claudia was too young yet to understand any of it. Would he guess, from the Sword in the bathroom, the broken gem around it? Would he know that I was… trapped in these memories, and couldn't break free? How could he save me? I felt so tired…

"Well," now calmly murdering my mother, his voice growing ever clearer, "how is it that you – a waif of a girl with no extraordinary magical talent – managed to defeat the greatest wizard of all time? How did you escape with nothing but a scar, while Lord Voldemort's powers were destroyed?"

The house fell down around baby me. The baby sobbed as it burned, "You're not. The greatest sorcerer in the world. Sorry to disappoint you, but Dumbledore was the greatest and, now that your goon murdered him, it's me. Not being vain or anything, it's kinda the truth. You've not killed me yet, not for lack of trying.

The cemetery now, his finger to my cheek. "How did you survive?" I shivered violently,

My first day of school, a scared little girl in an ill-fitting dress of pink polka-dots, I answered: "We've had this conversation before, Tommy. When I destroyed your diary. It gets old very quickly." My voice wavered, though, and I felt so cold…

We were in the chamber again, and I was sliding down the stone wall, pulling a fang out of my arm as I tried not to cry out in pain. Blood was everywhere, and Fawkes was not there this time. Fawkes was gone, to wherever phoenixes go when their master's die. "You're dead, Harry Potter," the Voldemort haunting me said from the shade of diary-Riddle, and my mind couldn't make out the logic behind that. It all seemed very… Arthur C Clark. I wondered suddenly if Riddle had been a fan, once, or if it was my own crazed, seriously damaged brain doing this to me. "I'm going to sit here and watch you die, Harry Potter. Take your time. I'm in no hurry… So ends the famous Harry Potter…"

The Basilisk fang weighed heavy in my hand, slippery with poison that was entering my body through a hundred tiny scrapes and cuts in it. No diary to destroy this time, I thought ruefully, my bones feeling so tired… "You really have to get new lines, Tommy boy," I sighed, letting my hands fall to the ground, my body sag. "You repeat yourself all too often." I'd fought hard… maybe this was just a dream? But my hands hit something as they fell, something cold and metallic… my eyes, blurry with, well, with everything, couldn't make out what it was, but I knew the shape well enough: Ravenclaw's diadem. How achronistic…

There was a sense of inevitability about it, as it slammed the fang into the central stone, and woke up screaming in pain.

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"Merlin! She's awake – somebody, go get- go get everybody," came a voice I didn't recognize.

Another, which, to my chagrin, took me a moment to recall, "Éléonore, you're alive!"

"Sev'rus?" I think I managed to cough-

A woman's voice then, "There'll be time enough for that later. I need you to push now, Ely-" She sounded all business. I didn't know why.

"Push?" An uncomfortably familiar pain rippled through me. I couldn't help it and cried out. I felt bruised and broken… I couldn't push if I tried. "The baby," I gasped in understanding.

"You're almost there-"

That's what they said when they saw the head, right? When had I gone into labour? What had happened? "How-?"

"It's been four days," Severus answered, knowing my question. "It's the eighteenth."

"What-?" Four days! Anything could have happened-!

"Quarter past eleven – at night – give or take a few minutes."

Not what I was asking, but close enough. I tried again. The room didn't seem like the hospital wing… I cried out as I pushed again, feeling the baby slide from me. "Where-?" I gasped at him, trying frantically to understand.

"Headquarters."

Another push, and then- "It's a boy."

I couldn't keep my eyes open to look on my son. I couldn't even try. "Henri-Auguste," I sobbed, falling into true sleep. I was safe now. "His name is Henri-Auguste Sévères."


	31. In Which I Become the Ghost of Easters Future

I forced myself out of bed a few hours after I woke to the pain that seemed to have become my existence. That was melodramatic, I know, but when you wake in bed after who knew how long, force the pain aside long enough to start cataloguing your injuries, and realize that every injury you relived in inexplicable memory-dreams had been inflicted, also inexplicably, upon your now severely beaten and bruised body, I dare you not to be melodramatic.

The noises of the house – HQ – had seemed strangely amplified in the silence of my room, even though they were few. I was alone when I woke, though the presence of armchairs near the bed and the scent heady scent of mint betrayed visitors that were not here now. The light filtering from behind the curtains was bright and lemony, and I guessed that it was early afternoon… Everyone had places to be that would be with me now, but I didn't mind. I wanted to figure out what had just happened before telling anyone else.

What had just happened? I'd never known of a demitimens with such scope, or one that had remained attached to an inanimate object – and Vladislas Tepes had made an exhaustive study of such things, if you could make it through his fascination with bloodshed to read it. A potion? Severus might know, he might have figured it out himself and saved me. I liked the idea of being saved by him. Saving myself was something I was too weak to do.

But had I? My mind had shown me over and over the death of my parents so that, intimately, I knew every second of it. My father, who'd fought for his family. My mother, who sacrificed her husband to save her daughter. The slightly warn edge of my father's sweater. The well-worn coffee table upon which two half-empty drinks glasses rested, a couple of old magazines, and tattered playing cards. The murderer as he entered my nursery, humanoid but not human – cold, not even malicious, just desirous of one end. I might have thought it was but a dream, no truth to it at all, but the lack of anger or any sort of passion in the man's snake eyes was enough to convince me of the truth of it. I don't know why. So what if I could not name the cause of the curse that had kept me in dreams for, what… the morning of the fourteenth to the evening of the eighteenth? how long was that? four days? The fact was there was something on the now Riddle-free Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw that had trapped me in my bizarre state of hypnagogia…

Or had it? Maybe I'd just snapped. The stress had gotten too much for me and I'd broke. This was some kind of psychosis I didn't know the name for – but that was okay. I wasn't interested in medicine anyway. It was understandable that I didn't know what madness I might have. I couldn't be expected to know everything.

But I was. I had to know everything, or evil would win. How annoying.

Oh, did I honestly just think that? I was supposed to be trying to figure out how I had lived in memories for four days, suffered seemingly every injury I remembered (and I was oft injured in my life, and my mind had lingered on the worst memories besides) as if I had just received them? Could it be that my mind, my magic, was that powerful? I had thought it some tripwire of Voldemort's, like the potion in the cave, but it could have just been me. I'd snapped at the conflicting emotions of absolute joy and abject sorrow raging through me, and my mind had taken it out on my body. Simple as that. I hoped.

Sometime during this thought process I'd dragged my aching body into the attached bathroom and was now staring at the porcelain tub as if it were rather a Persian rug and could offer me the secrets of life. Maybe it did. My vague recollections of oneirology from Divs said how water was supposed to be cleansing and revitalizing, signifying a change of life or circumstance. I didn't know what dreaming of your parents' murders meant other then that you were crazy.

I decided, after several long minutes, that staring at an empty tub was not going to, a) help my claim of sanity or, b) get rid of the warm, sweaty feeling of being too long in bed. So I filled the tub and continued my thoughts as I unwound the bandages that covered my frame. I could only assume that, as I'd been pregnant until very recently (if I'd given birth on the evening of the eighteenth to Henri-Auguste, what day was it now, and where was my son, or had that pregnancy all been a dream too, or…?) Madam Pomprey had had to stick with Muggle methods of healing. Or maybe not. I remembered having dreamt of my wedding night and my murder of Trixie, yet my ribs didn't feel broken now. Sore, yes, but not broken. My whole body felt like I'd been through a meat grinder, and I didn't even look at the mirror, but it was unusual to say the least to unwind gaze and say to myself, that's the cut where Wormtail took my blood, that's the one I Dudley gave me when I was five; the pains I feel on my back must be from that time when I was eight…

The Basilisk wound on my right arm was weeping quite openly, not bandaged at all, the reason for which I discovered a moment later when I tried to dab it with a washcloth and fabric dissolved interestingly. It didn't seem to be doing anything to my skin where it pooled and, distracted by this new oddity, I didn't notice until there was water lapping at my feet that the tub had overrun.

"Idiot," I cursed myself and shut the water off, paying no heed to the overflow as I climbed in. The tiles were charmed to absorb water, though why no one had thought to charm the tub to keep water from escaping, I don't know.

I shouldn't be thinking about that anyway, not when I was trying to figure out what had happened to me. It's important, Éléonore. Focus! The water was so nice though, and it felt so good to finally have given birth and rid of that pain… and somewhat back to my original size. It was hard to remember what it was to be one size, having either been pregnant or recovering from pregnancy since my sixteenth birthday. And here I was, closer to eighteen then seventeen, with Claudia almost a year old and the baby… Henri-Auguste… who was who knew how many days old.

I could see one of those giant family portraits that people hung in dining rooms and over fireplaces in my mind now, only in some sort of museum with a little bronze placard beneath reading: Severus Eteocles Snape, Earl Dover, and wife, Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Black Potter, Baronne de Calais, with children Claudia-Éléonore Séléné and Henri-Auguste Sévères, and all the people who saw it would ask themselves how in their right minds someone saddled with a name like mine had found it in her heart to give such names to such small children. Severus was probably less then pleased that I'd chosen to name our son (I had a son!) after him, but Claudia was Claudia-Éléonore after me and it'd not hurt anybody, and, besides, Sévères was a French patronymic of his name, not Severus at all, so there.

Oh God, I was sounding like a petulant two year old. Hopefully Claudia wouldn't inherit my temper… or Henri-Auguste. That was probably too much to hope for though. If she was a Parslemouth, she'd probably go just as mad as I was… and Runespoors lived for centuries according to some of the books I'd read when trying to figure out what they ate (and, while I'd seen Paracelsus eat prophecies and beetles for fun, I'd never actually seen him eat eat anything), and so Paracelsus'd probably be around to pester her long after I was gone…

Henri-Auguste was probably hungry. If I were a newborn, I'd probably be hungry. I'd been alone in the room, so Henri-Aug- oh, that was going to get long to think, let alone say. For short I shall call him… well, not Henri – that sounds too close to Harry and no one, so help me God, was going to use that awful computer-mess-up of a name around me in any form; besides, the thought of him going by Harry Snape was just too much, and I began laughing uncontrollably at the thought. I don't know why, but it just sounded so funny, and after all my tense thoughts and mental battles and probable psychoses, it was nice to have something to laugh at. Now that he was out of me and my belly not the most painful thing about my existence, I found it all rather hilarious, what that labour was about the least painful thing my body had inflicted upon itself, and the whole I-just-now-realized-how-bloody-long-my-children's-names-are-and-that-I-must-now-invent-nicknames thing. I sure as hell wasn't going to call Claudia Cloudy, so her name could stay as it was- and what on earth does 'sure as hell' mean?

As you might imagine, the water was lukewarm when I managed to control my laughing. I felt guilty for that, and pulled myself out. Maybe I was cyclothymic. That was a fun word… psych-lo-thigh-mic…

Oh this isn't helping anything! I'm the bloody Minister of Magic, damn the proxy. I'm the best DADA professor since Remus. I'm the Girl-Who-Lived. I am the wife of Severus Snape and mother of Claudia and… Auguste. I am Éléonore Snape, née Potter. I survived the Killing Curse. I have seen so in my own memories. Blood protection or no, when that bastard's wand turned on me, I survived and he had not. I was powerful. I was strong. And I knew it now. Regardless of what had happened while I was asleep, I'd not woken until I'd destroyed the Horcrux in my mind, and even if it was my own madness that had driven me to dream, I'd succeeded in releasing myself from it with that strange and maddeningly confusing Kubrick-esque sequence, where I could have sworn…

It didn't matter, though, what it was. I knew I was going to win now. True, I was still a few Horcruces short of the end (the real locket, the cup, the something else…), but I knew I could do it now.

First things first: must find Claudia and Auguste. As they weren't here, they must be somewhere else. Probably with Mrs. Weasley or one of their godparents (note to self, figure out godparents for Auguste: Tonks… Ron… and… maybe Professor Flit- I mean, Filius. He was nice to me, the new Deputy Headmaster, he and his family…). To find them, I obviously had to leave my rooms, which was problematic, as the only clothes that seemed to be present were those I'd worn since Valentine's Day. Careful scrounging through dresser drawers found me the better part of an ill-fitting outfit, and though I supposed I could conjure something, I wasn't secure enough in the longevity of my conjurings to risk their sudden disappearance. So, dressed in leftover summer things, I grabbed a blanket and strapped it around me like a toga before, slowly, making the trek downstairs.

It was silent, the hall, further suggesting it was mid-afternoon and everyone was elsewhere, doing what needed to be done at St. Mungo's or Hogwarts or getting foodstuffs in Muggle markets or battling evil. It was amazing how, given enough time, even that battle had become somewhat trivial. Wake, counter-attack, eat, sleep. The delightful banality of it. The rush to get everything done, the anger and sorrow when we failed, the delight when we succeeded – how different was it, really, from the rush to finish homework, the anger and sorrow of a failed test, the delight of an academic success? My KoRT, for all their living in shadows and tents on Hogwarts grounds, for all the injuries and battles and, yes, deaths, was still living. Life went on. Fleur was still the Fleur of madding shopping trips (though these days they were mostly plans for raids on Manolo Blahnik and Galeries Lafayette rather then actual trips), Remus still had his werewolf worries (especially now that Tonks was pregnant, and how, in every known instance of a werewolf and a non-werewolf conceiving, the werewolf had been the witch; he worried constantly about her, but he would have worried about Tonks regardless of war); and I was still me, with classes to attend and teach, papers to grade, and even the search through the histories for something that might have been made by Riddle into a Horcrux seemed routine.

I may have lived in a closet for ten years, but I'd read books and seen some movies. Wasn't war supposed to be bitter and bleak and Merlin-knew what else? Wasn't it wrong for it to be so trifling, something that only happens in the background of daily living? Maybe that's what war really was, a general feeling giving a certain patina to an age, and the peace that followed but a different light over the endless repetition of the evolutionary onus of birth and life and death, and that what we were fighting for never really meant anything because, regardless of the outcome, it would still be birth and life and death that went on in the world and always would be that cycle with its insignificant but oh-so-important worries about money and lovers and fashions and politics and art.

But I cannot believe that. It was important to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then could evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated, and leave people free to worry about money and lovers and fashions like they should. As trite and awful as it seemed, they should be allowed to do that, if that was their will, because the will was sovereign and there was no right in the world for anyone, be it God or Merlin or a Dark bastard like Voldemort to make slaves of anyone. If people wanted to be cold and cruel and petty idiots, it was their right…

I felt the weight of it all pressing down on me again and tired to shrug it off. I was strong. I would win. Or so I kept telling myself as I made my agonizing way down the stairs, having forgotten all the injuries my body had been inflicted with over the years. It seemed so silly, little seventeen-year-old-me being tasked with all of this. Look at me. Just look at me. Or not, I can't be so pretty looking right now.

I went in the kitchen, to use the floo. Perhaps it was just because I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts, but I didn't hear the faint sound of cabinets being opened and closed until I was in the room.

"Er, hi," I said, pulling the blanket more tightly around me though there was no real reason for me to do so, addressing the man and woman in the room. "What are you doing in my kitchen?"

They turned around. The man was fifty, give or take a half-decade. A pair of wire glasses was perched on his nose, his hair coffee-brown once but now more then peppered with grey. The woman was younger, though not by much, and brilliantly blonde. Their teeth were both impeccably straight and white as they smiled abashedly at me. I felt I should recognize them.

"They are your old nest-mate'sss," Par hissed from his place in front of the silent fireplaces.

"Egg-layersss. Death Eatersss attacked their nest."

"In Speldhurst two daysss ago. Gran-père and."

"The-one-who-wantsss-to-be-hisss-nest-mate," that was a new nickname. I wonder who Acel meant, "brought."

"Them from St. Mungo'sss thisss morning. But they are sieging."

"The hospital again and Gran-père had to go back right away."

"And there wasss some crisis in Strathmashie that Wantsss-to-be-Gran-père'sss-nest-mate."

"Had to leave to take care of. They've been opening cabinetsss for."

"The last half-hour."

"It isss very annoying."

"Make them stop."

"Oh," I gasped, the sadness hitting me like an iaceo, "Drs. Granger! Sorry, I didn't recognize you! I'm so glad to see you're both okay. Does Hermione know you're here?"

"Éléonore?" Mrs. Granger asked. I struggled for a moment to remember her name before it came to me: Miranda. She was Miranda, he was Grant. So lost am I in remembering their names I fail to notice the surprise with which they spoke mine. It seems that the symptom of being lost in my own mind has not gone away with my waking. I obviously needed psychological help. Or something. If only Dumbledore was here to ask-

No. I couldn't do that again. He'd told me about the Hollows. He'd told me the Basilisk venom in the Sword could destroy the Horcruces as I'd thought. He was dead. The dead should be allowed to rest in peace (There's peace in the green fields of Eden, they say! You got to die to find out!) and not bothered by the living. Not Dumbledore. Not Dumbledore then… It'd be wonderful to speak to my parents, though, after seeing how they died for me and tell them- but no. They'd be ashamed of me, and I couldn't live with that knowledge… The dead must remain dead, for the living to live on…

Oh, here I am, distracted again, and Grant and Miranda Granger were worrying over me, asking me why I was up and about when what skin my blanket didn't cover showed every sort of injury imaginable. For a moment, I'd even forgotten the pain again; now that it had returned, I did everything possible to forget it again.

Too glibly, "I've known worse tortures," and, indeed, I had, at my mind's own hand. But still, not the sort of conversation you have with your friend's parents. "I suppose you're looking for something to eat. Sorry the kitchen isn't too Muggle-friendly – you'll need a wand to turn the oven on – and, do forgive me if I sound rude, but I doubt you know how to use one like that. Where'sss Winky? Doesss she have Claudia and Auguste?"

"Isss that what you're calling the boy-child?"

"Don't be mean, Susss, I like the name."

"You like the Spice Girlsss and Vanilla Ice," the third head accused.

"So?"

Par huffed, then answered my question, "No. Your nestlingsss were with the shape-shifter and the quarter-Veela at Hogwartsss, last we heard."

"Well, that'sss good, at least. Winky?" I called into thin air, and the Grangers continued to look at me oddly until the house elf appeared and they looked at her oddly instead.

"Oh, Mistress Éléonore Potter ma'am, we was so worried, we were! What is you doing out of bed? You is sick-"

"I'm just going back to Hogwarts, Winky," I cut in before I could be forced back upstairs. "If I'm confined to bed, I want to at least be in mine. Do you mind taking care of the Drs. Granger here while we're all gone?"

Before she could answer, I was through the floo, Paracelsus resting like furs on my shoulder.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

Several hours later, "Let me get this perfectly straight, Éléonore, because this is a mad scheme even for you: you want to go to the Siege of St. Mungo's," Remus paused, seeming to want my confirmation on this point. I nodded, feeing determined. I'd stood up and taken action with the diadem. I was more then willing to do so again now. I was feeling slightly confused still, as if I'd been up drinking the night before, but no where near as blurry as I'd felt earlier…

"Alexandrie-Margaux!" Fleur had cried, "je suis si heureux que vous soyez éveillés, mon chère," as I tumbled out of the fireplace. She'd been holding a bundle wrapped in a pale blue blanket as she stood, moving from the table where a large map and several unidentifiable books were spread out. There'd been the faint hum of something orchestral – Holst's "The Planets Suite" maybe – in the background, though I didn't see the radio anywhere. I figured the house elves must be listening too it, and shrugged it off, not really caring enough, at the moment, to look for it.

"Éléonore!" Tonks had called, as equally as excited as she pulled herself and her seven-month belly to her feet, (resplendent in a shirt that blinked between

WARNING!

sex in a hot tub does

not prevent pregnancy

and

neither does toothpaste

in electric blue).

"I'm so glad you're awake!"

"That's exactly what I said, idiote."

"We excusez-moi," she said pretentiously, "I don't speak French."

They'd continued to banter back and forth, but I paid no attention to them as Claudia, who'd been sitting on the floor beside Tonks, half-crawled and (yes, though I didn't believe it myself) half-walked towards me, babbling, "Mummy! Mummy home!"

I'd laughed again, normally this time, and fell to my knees to pick her up. It hurt like hell and something worse, but I was so happy to be able to take my daughter in my arms and hold her, watch her walk and call for me. "Claudia!" I'd swung her up and forced myself onto my feet. "Mummy missed you. Have Auntie Fleur and Auntie Tonks been taking good care of you?" She giggled, and I kissed the crown of her head. My baby girl…

…Forcing myself back into reality, "Yes."

"And you don't just want to go and help, which would be bad enough considering half of everything I can see of you is bandaged, but want to go and taunt the enemy?"

"Well, it's more of a message then a taunt, but, essentially, yes. And now that I've given birth, most of the injuries will be healed by tomorrow morning thanks to the wonders of modern potioneering…"

…Fleur had handed me the blue blanket that contained my son. My son. I pulled back the blanket and stared at the miracle that I had managed not to destroy. He wasn't asleep, not then, and was looking up and me unwaveringly with brilliant emerald eyes that I knew so well, though their shape was more like Severus's then my own, more amygdaloidal then round. Pale features – what else could have been expected given my husband's dungeon-dweller and my own part-albino nature? – and that same unfortunate nose. Beautiful whips of red hair that I remembered so clearly from my memories of my parents' death. A beautiful, vivid ginger – my mother's ginger. I'd been so prepared to hate him, but seeing him I couldn't. I couldn't hate this baby boy with my mother's hair and my husband's nose that I resented myself for conceiving. I was in love the moment I laid eyes on him, just as I'd been with Claudia. There was some hormone that did that, I don't know what it was called, but I didn't care. He was my son, and I loved him. I could barely tear myself away to ask what day it was, unknowing of how long I'd been "dreaming."

"Vendredi," Fleur answered distractedly, looking me up and down, curious as to my well-being and, quite possibly, choice of clothing. "Vendredi après-midi."

Tonks snorted, "Speak English, gabacha," she muttered good-naturedly, changing her nose to a pig snout for my daughter's pleasure. Or maybe just to annoy Fleur – it was hard to tell sometimes.

"Well excuse me, chicard, if I am too worried about my friend to 'ave a moment to remember what language I 'ave to address my concerns in!"

"I don't know what you just said, but I take offence to it."

…Remus pinched the bridge of his nose. "And," he asked for one last clarification, "you want me to distract Padfoot long enough for you to do this."

I smiled wryly at the werewolf, who was, for all intents and purposes, the man in charge as St. Mungo's. "Yes – unless Ari's back."

…I'd asked, as soon as I could pull myself away from the contemplation of my children, what was going on in Strathmashie that they'd left to Muggles alone in a magical and still rather Dark house.

"There was a Dementor attack there two nights ago. Muggle authorities are trying to attribute their victims to some kind of supervirus. Ari went to take care of things a little while ago, though."

This caused me pause. If it was Ari who went to Strathmashie… I'd turned on the Runespoor. "Ari isss 'Wantsss-to-be-Gran-père'sss-nest-mate'?"

"Yesss."

"Obviously."

"Of course. Do you know anyone else who'd want to be Gran-père'sss nest-mate?"

"I dunno," it seemed like my plans, which I'd hardly followed through on at all, were coming to fruition. Curious, "Does Siriusss want to share a nest with her?"

"Obviously."

"Évidemment."

"Show off," Sus'd snapped…

Tonks, who was sitting next to her husband, snorted. Even Fleur, across from her, had to struggle to conceal an amused smile. Remus too rolled his eyes at this.

Severus, however, was not pleased. Anything involving my adoptive father made him less then pleased. I refused to get into their arguments, and Merlin knew they'd had them, and anytime one started to tell me about the other, I walked out. Sirius was my father, in every way a person could have a father at seventeen. And Severus was still a right nark at times, but I loved him. They could hate each other; I just didn't want to be involved. Nonetheless, Severus responded to thought of his high school nemesis being sexually involved with anyone, even in rumour, with much the same result as Sirius would have: inwardly, he was slightly ill at the thought; outwardly, he didn't give a pair of pixies' wings and didn't want to hear another word about it. Well, how Sirius would have reacted if the one Severus was sexually involved with wasn't me…

Then again, Severus just mightn't have been pleased because, entering HQ that evening after I'd explained what little I knew and what I wanted to do, we'd found 'my' friends gathered around the dining room table, planning as always. He was more sociable then he'd been when I'd first, er, propositioned him, but this was Severus we were talking about, and my friends would only ever be my friends.

Or he mightn't have been pleased because, after settling Claudia in the playpen that remained in one corner of the kitchen and securing Auguste in a sling, that I'd batted aside all help and proceeded to toss things together for a quick-rising bread and a stew even if, as Remus claimed, I was bandaged severely. They all urged me to rest, that one of them would do it, but after a few choice words on how a certain someone's potions were healing cuts and scrapes as we spoke and a few more about how I'd spent the last week – for I'd been informed by this point that it was currently the twenty-first, a week after I'd fallen into my bizarre coma – lazing about doing nothing, they finally decided to let me. Mostly because they were hungry.

Or maybe it was just because I could not julienne, brunoise, or batonnet for the life of me, and Severus despised seeing any ingredient for whatever purpose treated in such a way…

…The strangest thoughts had been passing through my head on my way from the kitchens to the dungeons. Not strange, wrong, but strange, unusual. It was strange to think that I had once been a baby like the ones I carried in my arms, so dependant on my parents for my every need. Paracelsus was still mildly appalled at how little Claudia could do on her own, and, admittedly, it was rather ridiculous, not that I begrudged her that. But still. There was something so amazingly ridiculous in the thought that she – or I – or he – depended so upon others to care for her when, in years that were not really long at all, she'd be more then able to do them herself, fully competent and, through gift of magic, be able to bend reality to her – or my – or his – will. I could see why Voldemort had so adamantly tried to find whatever hidden power I had that allowed me, as a baby, to defeat him.

Dumbledore had always told me, when he told me anything at all, that it was Mum's sacrifice that had protected me. If it was, I'd transferred it to my children last summer; if not, I'd wasted a lot of mental agony for nothing. I couldn't have been the only child in all of the sickly history of that curse whose parents had died for them, begging to be taken instead. My survival and Voldemort's pseudo-demise couldn't be some… singular event, some unique occurrence unrepeatable and irrational. I didn't want to believe that I was special, that I was… exceptional. But I was. I am Éléonore Snape, née Potter. I survived the Killing Curse and my own mind. I am strong…

Voldemort had been a baby once. Little Tommy Riddle, alone in the world, with a father who didn't want him and a dead mother, in St. Giles' Orphanage. He must hate the thought that he'd been so dependant on someone else. The Philosopher's Stone would only have been a step on his way to immortality – he'd not have consented to being dependant on even that. But wasn't he dependant on his Horcruces – all of them – to keep him from being killed? Surely he had to remember that Méléagre had been killed after his mother burnt his Horcrux, as had Rasputin when Prince Felix found his.

I'd tried to reconcile the idea of such a small, innocent thing as the baby boy in my arms (forgetting instantly all the anger I'd ever had for him while he was in my womb, which now seemed both moments and millennia ago) becoming something such as Voldemort, or that Voldemort had ever been one such as he. Even thinking that, I could scarcely recognize myself as that baby in my dreams, with the house falling down around me, or that small child in my memories of life at Azkaban South. I barely could acknowledge my memories of myself a year ago with myself now. And yet I felt I had not changed. Maybe I hadn't, inside, and it had been but my wrapping that was different… But there'd been something in me even then that had led me to this… My parents were good people. And yet I… I… I couldn't bring myself to think what I'd done to this world; I'd remembered well enough over this past week for a lifetime's worth of torture.

And yet, despite it all, there was still something human in Voldemort, even if I didn't want to believe it. Humans had predictable responses. Deny us water, we grow thirsty. Poke us, we jump back. Make us afraid for what we loved, and we'd rush to protect it. There I'd been, worried about my family, and even though I was covered in partially healed wounds with aching ribs and a weeping Basilisk fang wound, and I'd rushed to find my family.

The only thing Voldemort cared about himself, however, was himself. But the Horcruces were part of him. They shared bits of his soul. They were him in a way his body no longer was only; they secured him to this plane of existence. Threaten them, and he'd rush to them. It wouldn't help me to figure out where Slytherin's locket was, but it would help me figure out where he'd hidden the cup and the other thing.

I hoped…

…Or it might just be that I'd gotten injured, again, and he'd not been able to stop it. He took that sort of thing rather badly…

…After flooing into the kitchens and liberating my children from Fleur and Tonks, I'd headed down to the dungeons to find Severus, desperate to have him figure out what had just happened to me, because God knew I couldn't figure it out for myself right now. I felt like I'd taken 'Shrooms or something, I was on such a trip. Not that I've ever taken 'Shrooms, but you don't go through seven years of boarding school without learning some interesting things.

All I was really certain of was that, a) Severus was a brilliant potioner and had potions that could make these God-awful wounds hurt less (and, no, I didn't even think of going to the infirmary or, heaven forbid, staying in bed until someone came for me), b) I wanted to make certain that Severus was alive and hadn't killed anyone in what was sure to be his worry for me, and, c) if anyone could make any sense (or use) out of Basilisk venom seeping from my elbow, it would be Severus.

"Where'sss a God-damned minging phoenix when you need one!"

"Albuquerque," Acel told me, sliding down my arm a little and prodding my venom-leaking wound with his tail. To my surprise, it seemed to do him no harm.

"Why," Sus asked with the patience of one who suffers fools not at all, "would a fire-bird be in Albuquerque?" I was more curious as to how I was supposed to go around for the rest of my life with Basilisk venom, or something like it, seeping from my right elbow.

Evenly, "Why not? Besidesss, Bugsss Bunny alwaysss getsss lost there; I figured that it'sss sorta like the place to go for all creaturesss in need of a vacation from crazy scale-lessss onesss."

"Have you ever felt the need to go to Albuquerque?"

With what must have been a slightly worrisome look on my face, I manoeuvred the arguing Runespoor around my elbow like a tourniquet. "Well…. No…"

"My point exactly."

I rolled my eyes at them. "Paracelsusss, did you go-"

"Ebenau!" Par'd suddenly shouted, loud enough to scare Auguste, who was unlike Claudia unused to his brothers' unending enthusiasm.

"Gesundheit," I'd cursed, trying to calm my son down, which wouldn't have been so hard if Paracelsus hadn't begun fighting amongst himself again. "Only you," I told my children (God, how long was it going to take to get used to that plural?), "are lucky enough that, whatever idiocies you may get into when you're older, your brothers will have done worse." Whatever the Runespoor meant by Ebenau, I didn't care, though I was somewhat surprised when he slithered down my arm and onto the floor, saying he was going to ask one of the school owls for a ride and that he'd be back later. No idea what he meant, only that I was certain none of the school owls would be taking a three foot, three-headed snake anywhere of their own volitions.

I continued on, trapped too trapped in my thoughts to pay them much attention. But I could feel myself growing saner as I walked, the vague feeling that something wasn't all there with me anymore falling away with each step. I destroyed the diadem. That was one less Horcrux. A smoke had poured out of it, one that reminded me of the echo that came out of the diary, but I'd AK-ed that. I almost one hundred percent certain I had. Then, not right away, but soon after, I'd fallen into malignant memory. I'd no idea why, but I had. I'd fallen out of it, perhaps because of the physical strain of childbirth, or some potion they'd given me, or because I'd destroyed the diadem in my dream. These thoughts carried me to his classroom where, because there was no God or, if there was one, he enjoyed torturing me in new and inventive ways, I discovered my friends had been lying and it wasn't Friday afternoon. Darn close, yes, but still morning enough for lunch not to have been served and, therefore, all my Potions NEWT classmates were still frantically stirring whatever torture Severus had set for them today.

He didn't look up, though some of my classmates did and blinked as if they'd seen a Madonna. Well, it isn't every day you see someone toting a baby around Hogwarts, let alone two. I'd been sorely tempted to snap at them, "If I throw a stick, will you leave?" but knew it was stupid even as I thought it. They had to stay, and probably feared my husband's wrath more then mine. Cowards. At least they knew better to whisper to themselves in his class. That would have lead to something really embarrassing like, I dunno, Severus noticing me and being all happy and showing it. That wouldtotally ruin his persona of most-evil-non-Dark-Lord out there, and he'd never forgive me, even if I was his wife.

I was almost to his desk when I finally spoke, having taken a moment to catalogue all the changes that he'd undergone in a week. He'd looked tired and somewhat broken – not that anyone probably could tell but me; hell, I might be making these things up and not know any better when it came to Severus and his emotions sometimes, though the way he held himself as he sat there made me doubt that was the case. He looked like he'd spent every moment of the past week trying to help me. I don't know what I did to deserve someone like him, but didn't care. He loved me, I loved him, and that was all I really needed. Besides world peace and a way to keep Paracelsus from finding all the Muggle pop stations that we shouldn't get reception for at Hogwarts. Dimly, I wondered what the Runespoor had wanted a ride for, but shook it out of my head quickly. "I think you need a permit to be so morose, Sev'rus," I tried – and failed – to make light. I've still got the seal-maker upstairs, somewhere; if you want, I can run and get it for you."

With monumental self-control, he stood and, with only a hint of surprise, spoke my name. Then with a look that said, "If you don't tell me right this instant why you are not resting, in bed, healing all these injuries I've no idea how you got sleeping and preparing to tell me why exactly your Runespoor interrupted my class last week to lead me back to our rooms so I could find you in a coma or why there was a sword stuck in the bathroom tiles…" he gestured towards his office door.

I returned his with a look of, "Don't expect any answers out of me, I'm far from having any."

"So you just felt like slipping into a coma for a week?" he quipped back with his eyes.

"Beat the hell out of having to be conscious and giving birth. I swear, if you even think about knocking me up again before the new millennium," my eyebrows somehow managed to get across, "I will garrotte you to within an inch of your life with the pinkest pair of shoelaces I can find." I trailed after him to his office nonetheless. Almost immediately I crashed onto the lovely old couch, placing Claudia at the far end of it and snuggling Auguste to me as I curled up.

I near fell asleep in the three seconds it took me to do that, and was startled into waking when Severus, in a mood I was too tired to read, said, "Do you want to tell me what happened to you? Starting with the part where you decided to destroy a Horcrux," (this he hissed in such a way that it sounded more like the Parseltongue for, "Ever just asss sure," and forced me to contain a giggle I was sure he'd not appreciate me loosing), "without telling anyone."

Blinking stupidly for a moment at him, I tried to figure out where to begin. "So you're not angry?"

"Angry? What in Merlin's name would I be angry about? You've spent a week in a coma; I've not had time for anger – though next time you choose to stupidly endanger yourself, please don't drag our children into it."

Well, Severus, I'm sorry, but you knew how insane I was when you married me, I thought to myself. I can't keep my temper in check half the time and apparently don't know how to work contraceptive potions properly and what little sanity I have is slowly being driven out by a Runespoor with an addition to radio and human sexuality. "It's hard to be rational," I tried, surprised to find myself yawning. How could I be so tired after sleeping for a week? God, I hoped I didn't fall back into that hell of dreaming… "when you feel your life is spinning out of control."

Sadly – defiantly sadly – "Why didn't you tell me?"

I was hormonal and peeved at you and hadn't planned on doing anything until I decided that destroying a piece of Lord Voldemort's soul in our bathroom was a grand old idea. "It's not like I planned it or anything." I yawned again. "I blame the hormones."

And then I'd fallen asleep, which I think pissed him off the most about this whole thing…

I dunno. But by the time I awoke again he'd calmed down and prepared more potions for me. In fact, he was probably just displeased because he'd learned what I'd dreamt this week. It was sweet and stupidly annoying. He'd tried to talk me out of my idea, but what can I say, I was an idiot and wanted this battled to end.

No, let me revise that. I am totally and completely an idiot. This is a fact of life. As I've said before, I apparently don't know how to work basic prophylactic potions. Or something. So it's pretty much a sure thing that I'd do something idiotic again. Like go after Quirrel-mort alone. Like go into the Chamber. Like trying to go after my parents' betrayer with a thirteen-year-old witch and wizard. Like not running the instant I saw Wormtail that night. Like going to the DoM. Like not being able to save Dumbledore. Like calling up his memory again and destroying a Horcrux in the bathroom…

Like telling Voldemort's minions that their master needed to keep a better eye on his belongings… Which was what I planned to do, tomorrow.

I think I'll take Sirius's motorbike. There's probably a leather jacket of his I can borrow in the attic. Maybe I can even clean a little and calm myself down, talk myself out of my idiotic plans. They worried I'd over-exhaust myself, but I didn't care. I needed to think, and thinking wasn't coming too clearly. Yes, cleaning was the answer. And then baking some pies. And then, maybe, just maybe, I'd be able to realize that everything in my world was going right for once and I didn't need to fight, or fear. Yes, cleaning. I'd find myself a leather jacket to wear while riding to my "appointment" at St. Mungo's siege, and I'd clean the attic in the process. There were a tonne of Dark stuff up there. Maybe even something on Basilisks and antidotes for the poison it looks like is going to be flowing out of me like some sick, never ending elbow-period…

Oh, God, I'm going mad.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

There were, in fact, three leather jackets in the attic. One had a furry Padfoot sewn on the back and looked, if I do say so myself, utterly stupid. Another was dark green dragon hide. I took that one, even though it was a little large. I was totally going to be the coolest teacher at Hogwarts now. I took a minute to process this thought in my head and consider my co-workers. Not much competition there, at least with the current staff. In fact, I think I might just be the coolest because the girls made me blush during that stupid Sex Ed class. I shutter at the memory. Still, I shrugged it on and started opening boxes and trunks, more out of habit then actual cleaning…

There was also a locket, emblazoned with an emerald "S" that reeked the Darkest cold I wished I could say I'd never felt before. Being the idiot I am, I shouted for Severus then, turning my arm so that the still-weeping Basilisk Venom could drip onto it, not thinking further then, "This is so gross," and, "Either I'm hallucinating or…"

I really hoped I didn't end up in another coma.


	32. In Which I Learn the Meaning of Death

I know many quotes on death. From Walt Whitman, that greatest of American poets:

…And as to you Life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths; (no doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.) I hear you whispering there, O stars of heaven; O suns! O grass of graves! O perpetual transfers and promotions! If you do not say anything, how can I say anything?...

And from TS Eliot's first play, Sweeney Agonistes:

…Birth, and copulation, and death. That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks: birth and copulation and death. I've been born, and once is enough…

And of course Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard's masterpiece:

…No, no, no… you've got it all wrong… you can't act death. The fact of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen – it's not gasps and blood and falling about – that isn't what makes it death. It's just a man failing to reappear, that's all – now you see him, now you don't, that's the only thing that's real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back – an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes until, finally, it is heavy with death…

I know many quotes on killing. There were almost as many. From Aldous Huxley:

…It takes two to make a murder. There are born victims, born to have their throats cut…

And Voltaire:

…It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets…

And from the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir:

…There's no difference between one's killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It's exactly the same thing, or even worse…

I don't know so many on madness, though. Madness is fluid, tempestuous and changing. It cannot be defined by words or thoughts. It exists by itself, in a realm so impossibly different from our own that it is impossible to contemplate. Even from within. But do madmen know their mad? Is the knowledge of being mad enough to assure you've not exceeded madness? I hope so. I've seen the long-term ward in St. Mungo's for that type of thing and read about some of the things they can do… Wizards can help certain things, yes, but others we're worse off then Muggles for treating. I bet you, if Mum had lived, she'd have been a great Mind Healer. She'd have been able to help so many…

But instead she let herself be killed, for me.

I decided right then that, as soon as this was over, the war I mean, I was going to have to give money to St. Mungo's for a decent mental healthcare ward. They could name it after my mother: The Lily Evans Potter Wing for Mental Health and Diseases. In fact, since I'm richer then Merlin, my husband is richer then God, and my adoptive father (unless he manages to get things together with Ari, which I still find hilariously funny, mostly because I just figured it for a joke the first time I thought of them together and not cursing each other's brains out – with witticisms, that is, not spells – and manages to give me an adoptive/god- sibling) more so then the entire pantheon, I can pretty much give away a lot of money… Maybe I'll even start a charity, like that rich Muggle computer guy did. I can call it The Severus and Éléonore Snape Foundation, or something like, and we can give money to help with mental illnesses and war orphans and widows and pre-Hogwarts education and werewolves who couldn't afford Wolfsbane and vampire rehabilitation and rights for house elves so they wouldn't be as bad off as Dobby had been, and rights for other humanoids and part-humans so they wouldn't feel pressured into joining Dark Lords to get their points across, and creating a civil rights group that would make sure that no more innocents like Sirius got sent to Azkaban and to get the Dementors out of that hellhole and to make sure there were no more Azkaban Souths for Wizarding children. Hell, I was Minister now and could force those laws through simply because there was no way to convene the Wizengamot and, if anyone thought to appeal to the ICW, no one could naysay any humanitarian (or goblitarian) rule I might create. I didn't want to be a Franco, however golden my paving stones might be; the moment the war ended, I'd set in motion free elections as soon as practically possible, I promised myself. The moment the people freely elected a Minister I'll step down, totally Cincinnatus.

But back to my Voldemort induced madness. Or maybe natural madness exacerbated by the presence of Dark Lords and their Horcruces. Or maybe anyone would go a little mad after all I've been through. The wonderful space-odyssey-esque dream that I still hadn't and no longer cared to figure out probably hadn't helped matters either. Only one decent quote came to mind for that – from Hamlet, naturally:

…Though this be madness, yet there is method in't…

There had to me some method in to my madness, even if I didn't see it yet. Otherwise this was pointless, and if this all was pointless, well, I didn't want to know. There had to be a point to life, even if there wasn't meaning, even if it was only continuation of the species. There had to be, just had to. Or else I might really go mad – if I haven't already. 'Cause what would be the point of this war then – my parents' deaths, and Dumbledore's, and Cedric's, and Ephraim Cauldwell's, and Malfalda Hopkirk's, and the young werewolves Dianica and Raul's – and Sirius's false imprisonment, and Neville's parents' torture, and my time at Azkaban South, and all of Severus's pain while being a spy – if there was no meaning, no point? What was the point of it all if there was no reason, if we were all no more then ants scuttling over the surface of the Earth like a plague, using up the natural resources and killing the planet and pushing out more of our kind then anyone could think possible and killing each other for the fun of it? What then?

I refused to believe there was a higher power, if only because my own life sucked too much for me to believe someone would willingly let my life be as bad as it had been. But, Herne and Hecate, sometimes I think it'd be easier.

No, I take that back. 'Cause if some bastard, whoever he was, had a reason for letting Dark Lords rise and rise again for people like me, who just wanted to live our lives, to destroy, then there was something seriously wrong with the world. And, while there was much wrong with the world, it couldn't be all that completely screwed.

Or maybe I was. I dimly recalled promising Severus I wouldn't do anything idiotic, at least until my plan to take Sirius's motorcycle over to St. Mungo's tomorrow and mock Tommy to his minions' faces, hopefully leading to the revelation of his remaining Horcruces' hiding places. I wasn't even sure this locket was the missing Horcrux, but, really, what were the odds that there was more then one locket out there that both looked like the one Salazar Slytherin had given his daughter Madalen and had the icy, Dark feeling of blackest magic?

A second drop of Basilisk venom fell from my exudating elbow wound onto the now smoking locket I held below it. The tiny gems incrusted upon its surface, which had began to pop and sizzle like demented popcorn kernels after the first, hissed their protests. They sounded like whispered Parseltongue profanities in the suddenly all too cold and silent attic. "Whore. Bitch. Cunt," it screamed at me, slowly at first and then too quickly for me to catch every expletive, only to tell they were nowhere near as creative as Sus's. I blinked as a third droplet fell onto the locket, the tiny emeralds fading from green into grey, and popped open with an amazingly clear snap.

The room went black. The boxes, the dragon hide jacket, and low, sloping ceiling all faded into the distance… but it was not the black of utter Darkness, but of a night, moonless, before all but the brightest stars of risen. I would have glanced up to look for them – Gamma Orionis, Tau Ceti; Alpha Canis Majoris – but I daren't take my eyes off the monstrous locket of slightly beaten gold, with its cover decoration of a cursive "S" outline in now-grey gemstones, that was now opening of its own accord…

It reminded me of my own locket, in shape at least – the locket Severus had given me. Sometimes I think he gave me jewellery because it was expensive and he wanted me to be sure of his love, or something like that. I don't really know, but I have wondered it – and, unlike the fake locket, there was no carefully folded note, no taunt from the unknown R.A.B inside, but rather there was engraved on the left-hand side a message. Also like mine, which carried pictures of my family alongside Latin, it read:

Ps 90:12

on the inside, which I knew by no means that I could name to mean: …Teach us to number our days and recognize how few they are; help us to spend them as we should… Did Voldemort even realize the irony of these things? I might have laughed if it wasn't for what was on the mirroring side was a large, unblinking eye.

Sauron, I thought stupidly. If I didn't know any better, I'd say Riddle had a big fanboy thing going on here. That thought quickly passed from my mind, though, as I stared into its wide, human lens. The pupil was a clear, earth-shattering blue – sapphire? No. Cobalt. Prussian. Ultramarine – though the whites were literally crawling with hundreds of tiny red veins. It had power to it, and I couldn't have looked away if I wanted to, and more then just the irrational desire to blink more often since it could not. Stupid irrationality.

Time seemed to move slowly, and even the faint, eldritch cry that poured from it (as if someone was slowly playing "Neptune, the Mystic" backwards my still idiotic mind thought) seemed to come unnaturally slow. Another drop of venom was welling from my un-understandable wound, but it seemed to come too slowly too…

And the eye began to speak.

Though I had done this thrice now, a curious sense of jemais vu settled over me. I knew it was familiar – the high-pitched wailing, the deadening of other senses, the hazy smoke that slowly poured from the pupil like some strange black pink eye – it seemed just as unknown and frightening as ever before. How could I have only done this a week before? It cried out again as the next drop hit it, but didn't pause the rant it had begun: "You can't win," it told me. I fought the irrational, hopefully born of bizarre dreams and a week's worth of not eating anything they couldn't inject into me, desire to stick my tongue out at the pale, dark-haired head slowly pooling from the locket's right-hand side. My limbs, despite my assurances otherwise, feel weak still; I knew I should be resting, despite my irrational desire to clean rather then remain uselessly in bed. I should run, but my legs felt colloidal, my arms asthenic, especially where the deathly fluid was dripping from my body (the only thing I could compare it to was lactation, but only in the sense of something being pulled out of me; but this was sickness, not life, being pulled from me); and my throat was as if paralyzed, making it impossible for me to cry out again or even breathe.

"I'm stronger then you. More powerful then you. Even like this, I can defeat you. You think I need a wand, a body to kill you?"I knew it mustn't let it talk. Think Lord of the Rings – an ithildin door, the fen of The Battle of Dagorlad, now the all-seeing eye – I told myself. It corrupted people. Think of it like the One Ring. (Three rings for the Elven-Kings under the sky… Herne and Hecate, how do I do this to myself? Stop thinking of Black Speech poems and remember to breathe. Breathing is good. Breathing is necessary. Breathing will keep me from passing out and, therefore, most certainly dying. Dying would be bad, especially seeing as how I'd Auguste now to think of too… A son, a son, I'd a son and a daughter and a husband and images of Elven hands wearing Narya, Nenya, and Vilya playing in my head that I cursed myself for, uselessly, knowing the names of The Three… didn't I have better uses for my mental powers then useless knowledge? Like breathing… In, Out, In, Out…)

A torso followed. Why wasn't I killing it? "You think that you can just stand there and kill me, you freak? You little mudblood whore?" I was strong. I'd destroyed the diary and the diadem; I could do this too… I hoped. Just drip some more of the poison on it… (…Seven for the Dwarf-Lords in their halls of stone… God-damn it all! Work brain! For once in your life, work! Find my wand and summon the now-fallen locket and end this all. Dripping Basilisk venom or icky wound-pus or whatever this was coming from my elbow wasn't working fast enough, or wouldn't work alone. What to do? Didn't I call Severus? I should've brought the Sword… Idiot, idiot, idiot, why didn't I think things through for once in my life? ... In, Out, In…)

"Look at you, you idiot. Just standing there, gaping at me. What do you think you are, some sort of hero come to destroy me? – Ha! Destroy? Me? You're nothing. Nothing. Your own parents died rather then see you grow up to be the monumental failure they knew you'd be. Your own kin didn't even want you – you should have stayed in that cupboard, where you belonged. The only worth you'll ever have is as a servant, a slave. Look at you," his eyebrows raised in a familiar manner, and in that second he wasn't Tom Riddle, the Dark-Lord-that-Would-Be, but Severus, eyes going black and not at all warm. I felt the floor rise up to meet me. A cold laugh and a heavy thud echoed alongside the wailing, ghostly shrieks. It was rough and chill, the floor, and a hot, unpleasant wind billowed up from between the floorboards. I expected to turn and find third degree burns, or at least bruises, covering me, but I couldn't turn. I felt like a broken rag doll, a paraplegic, a… a girl who was being told truths she didn't want to hear, let alone believe were true. Were they? I don't know, but they felt like it. Dark magic at work, I imagine, or… "Look at you," he repeated. "You killed everyone who ever gave a damn about you. The only reason Snape hung around isss because you're a good lay – you'd have to be, to be worth sticking with after you got knocked up. But, then again, he never did have good taste. He liked your Mudblood cunt of a mother, didn't he? Gives new meaning to 'keeping it in the family…'" he laughed sickly.

He was right – why was it that Dark egomaniacs were always right? I knew Severus loved me – even narks like Severus didn't propose to sixteen-year-old girls they don't yet know they've impregnated if they don't love you, at least, I think – but it was painful to hear such things aloud. Even if they were lies, which I could only hope they were. I tried to force my mind to think of spells, to call for Severus – the real Severus – again to help, but I couldn't. With every word the Riddle-in-the-Horcrux spoke, I could feel the familiar despair settling on me… (And, by ever demon known to snake and Wizard, why was the only thing of any use running through head …Nine for moral men doomed to die; one for the Dark Lord on his Dark throne, in the land of Mordor, where the shadows lie…? I felt doomed to die as I watched legs sprout from the hideous Horcrux-creation, which now looked halfway between blue-eyed, twenty-something Riddle and a Fell Rider… my Lord of the Rings comparisons had to end soon, before I asked if he'd read the Quenta Silmarillion. How do you ask your murderer about his taste in literature when you can't seem to breathe? … In, Out…)

"What are you going to do then? Sob at me to death?"he spat as he came ominously closer (and I could swear I heard "Dies Ira: Tuba Mirum" in the background as he approached), "I've seen your heart, and it is mine."I shouldn't listen too it. I knew better then that… I had to stop listening to him. I needed to stand up and… no, I didn't even need to stand. All I had to do was pull the locket towards me and bleed the stupid Basilisk venom on it and it'd all be over… Where was my wand? Had I even brought it with me? I was stupid, so stupid… "I have seen your dreams, Harry Potter, and I have seen your fears. All you desire is possible, but all that you dread is also possible…" (…One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them; one ring to bring them all and in the Darkness bind them, in the land of Mordor, where the shadows lie… In…)

"Unloved, always… never more then a nuisance… They call you a fraud, you know… I don't even know why they bother with you. They're better off without you, happier without you, glad of your absence…" But we were at war, and life did go on; they would have been at my bedside if they could, I think… "Your 'father' confessed that he would rather his friend have lived, not you – a whore who'd spread her legs for any snake… Who wouldn't prefer your parents to you? What person would want you? You are nothing, nothing, nothing…"I tried to remember that I was strong. But I didn't feel strong. I'd spent the last week remembering all my worst memories, feeling all my injuries, and had come out of it alive… but the power I'd felt from this knowledge seemed to have faded away entirely. Rather then being proud for surviving my mind, I felt weak for having ever been trapped in it. It was my mind, my own mind, and I can't control it? If I couldn't do that, what did I expect to ever accomplish? Destroy Voldemort? His memory had just about killed me three times now. Three! How did I ever think I could go against the real thing? Every time I'd fought against the real him I'd not died only by great luck, and if I'd anymore of that she was keeping it from me… "You have been kept alive only to die at the right moment… but I'll settle for now…"

My mind was going mad with thoughts I'd thought I'd long since suppressed. I was very good at suppressing bad things, so I'd thought. But now all of the words and thoughts and whatever else was bundled up there with them were floating freely around my head. (What is the point? Even if I manage to defeat him, another will rise…? And He's had five decades at least to improve his magic; I'm just a stupid little girl who didn't even know I was a witch until seven years ago. If Dumbledore couldn't stop him, how do I expect to…? And He's right, he's right, he's right… Breathe…) "There's no one here to die for you today, Harry Potter…"

There had to be a way… where was the locket?

He was at my feet now, an oddly solid wand in his flickering and still mostly translucent body. "You could have been great… but you chose the wrong side. You always choose wrong…"

And, in that one instant, I couldn't think. My heart, my lungs, my mind – all these shut down for one second, leaving me broken and (momentarily dead; I could feel pallor mortis setting in) numb. For one impossible, brief moment, I couldn't bring myself to care what happened to me. Live or die, it was all the same, in the end. Why not save myself the devastation of my inevitable failure and just let him get it over with?

He was just beginning to cast – God, I don't know what, my mind wasn't paying any attention to what, though assumed quite naturally it was something Dark – when I snapped back into myself, a flood of faces – Severus, Claudia, Auguste, Sirius, Tonks, Remus, Fleur, and so many more, too fast to name, but all the Order, and all my students at Hogwarts, and all those dead whom I had loved… - rushed through my mind, together with one singular, powerful emotion that swelled so big in my breast it was impossible for me to contemplate without going mad.

I did anyway, and decided as, life suddenly coming back to my limbs, I scuttled backwards and wished more then cursed a tripping jinx in his direction. I'd no idea where my wand was, but it worked – by Merlin and his pointy hat collection, it'd worked! This infused me with a feeling of smugness, of superiority – or, at least, better duelling tactics. I'd fought scarier things then this Riddle-Horcrux (okay, mostly just the real Tom Riddle, but still). I'd gotten out of hairier situations then this one, where at least I was only fighting for my life in the attic of HQ and, therefore, could easily scream for medical attention later… Hell, I'd lived through dancing at the Yule Ball with Neville, a thought that struck me oddly then as my hands found one half of an ancient (and probably cursed) pair of tap shoes as I tried to scuttle away. I threw the shoe at him, but, as I should have expected, it passed through him as if he were no more then the ghost of Tom Riddle as he'd been in the age of Disco.

It was at this moment an image of Voldemort, in a powder blue suit, doing a Disco popped into my head. While it confirmed that, yes, I was completely out to lunch, it also broke the last of whatever spell had fallen over me. The room, which had as if disappeared, made itself known again, with boxes and trunks stacked from floor to ceiling, a couple of pieces of furniture that hadn't been burned by Sirius in a fit of Let's-Rid-the-World-of-all-the-Black-Family-Heritage a few years ago resting under fuzzy anti-dust spells; an old wardrobe that I recalled being told when we moved it up here it was made out of an old apple tree that had fallen in his Uncle Alphard's yard when he was a boy and how Sirius had chosen not to burn it because it'd been his uncle's hope that, one day, someone would find Narnia on the other side. The music I could have sworn was playing all around me reminded me still more of Verdi then Holst, but what did I know? All I knew was that, suddenly, I was thinking clearly enough to both spot the locket on the floor (still spewing forth temped smoke from its black slightly behind and to the left of Horcrux-Riddle No. Three) and the second tap shoe, which I promptly threw through the echo though I knew it would do no good.

So, raising my hands and deciding spontaneously that, if I could do it once, I could make it happen again, I started shouting every curse that came to mind at the Horcrux-Riddle. And I mean every curse, from Wingardium Leviosa on up to Dark spells that spewed acid on a box of something that smelled like burning rubber as it melted after passing uselessly through the apparition.

"You really think that you can destroy me?"

"Bastard," I cursed, trying an accio and having it fail as he caught it up, tisking me with his free hand. I sent the strongest severing curse I knew at his jugular in return, feeling the icy burn as it exploded from my fingertips, and would have been covered in arterial spray had he a body to separate his head from.

"You didn't kill me as a baby… you were just lucky: the girl who has survived by accident, and because Dumbledore was pulling the strings? I know things… I've heard you crying out in your sleep; I've heard your plans to destroy the me-that-is… and I know that the protection that was once on you is now on your bastards…"

I found myself taunting him right back, my entire body covered in blue light, beams of it pouring from my fingertips as I tried to get to the locket… (Drip Basilisk venom on the locket, that's all I need to do; I can make it if I do… In, Out, In…) "Accident, was it, when my mother died to save me? Accident, when I decided to fight in that graveyard – I take it you 'heard' about that? Accident, that you're standing up here talking to me, unable to 'kill me properly'?"

The Horcrux-Riddle screamed this time, and I swore I heard in the background other screaming voices, "…mors stupebit et natura, cum resurget creatura, judicanti responsura…" who wouldn't give me a translation of what I could only guess came to, "…you will die, Mudblood, because the Dark Lord said so…" His actual words were so much less worrying, "Accidents!Accident and chance and the fact that you crouched and snivelled behind the skirts of greater witches and wizards, and permitted me to kill them for you!"

So I did what I did best, fighting back that real fear as I send curses – iaceos and accios and sectumsemperas and crucios, but the crucios failed to even twist maddeningly from my hands though the Darker the curse the colder I could feel my hands growing until they felt numb and laden with icicles, so I didn't even try the Killing Curse I knew would end it all if I'd just my wand, wherever it'd gotten to – and quoted The Unbearable Lightness of Being: "…But is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessary to bring it about?" I said, "Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us."

A purple light came my way, and, though I tried to dodge it, it still hit and only bringing me closer to the Riddle-echo. "How lovely," he teased, laughing as I stumbled to the ground, the force of his spell knocking my legs from underneath me. (Less talk, more summoning; less talk, more summoning.) "They've trained you to talk now. What next, roll over?"

I felt kind of disappointed that that was the best he could come up with. "No, but if I really wanted to be their lapdog I'd tell you to think," I tried to contain a grin as the locket flew from his hands and I pressed it to my elbow (which, my mind couldn't help but thinking, was the strangest was to rid the world of a Horcrux, with your elbow, that is), "Think really hard about what you've done, and try for some remorse, Tom. But that's not me."

Querulously, "What is this?" He was growing weaker now, I could tell; and though he stayed perfectly still, his limbs were starting to retract back into his torso and whatever words were to follow this Horcrux-Riddle's question turned into the death-throes of some litch. I wished for the quick ease of the Advada Kervada.

"This," I said slowly, feeling gold melt against my skin, and loudly, so as to be overheard his shrieking and that of the music, which was going about as mad as I had to be to hear it, "is me, sending you to hell. No worries though," I added more softly as the noise began to die away and the memory of Tom Riddle, who had once been just like me, faded away, "I've sent your bags ahead; the sword-wielding demons are waiting for you."

There was a terrible, impenetrable silence.

My hands shook, and I felt myself collapse backwards, finding myself seated on a trunk that had appeared behind me without my noticing. The locket, now a melted jumble of metal, tumbled from my hands and hit the floor with a dull, yellow thud. In a daze, I looked at the melted metal that encapsulated my Basilisk wound; it hurt like hell, but at least it wasn't spouting venom, for the moment.

Well, I thought, I've done it again. Four down. Just the Cup, the whatever-else, and the bastard to go. I-

I became aware of a heavy pounding on the door. Thinking I should get it, I tried to force myself to rise, luckily avoiding that obstacle when the door came crashing inwards, tearing apart into splinters before it could land next to the mangled and still smoking box labelled, oddly enough, "Misc. IRA."

"Éléonore," Severus went, as worried as I'd ever heard him sound, which might still have sounded gruff to other's ears but was enough for me to know he must have been trying at the door for ages. "What the hell happened here?" His nose was wrinkling from the noxious smell of the burning "Misc. IRA," but he was more concerned about me then the house potentially burning down around us.

I opened my mouth, closed it again, then pointed at the locket by my feet. I broke into something halfway between laughter and a sob. "I guess," I choked out with some difficulty (primarily because Severus had crushed me close against him and, gathering both me and defunct locket, was in the process of taking me downstairs, "that someone in the Black family knew R.A.B." I should have guessed it earlier – the Blacks were well known for their Dark ways, their last name began with the letter "B" and, even if the R.A.B in question wasn't one of them, chances were that they knew a Death Eater with those initials. For the locket to be in this house, R.A.B couldn't have been a member of the Order. If it was a member of the Order who stole the locket, Dumbledore would have known and, when he'd seen the locket (but had he? Had he looked at it at all?), when he'd seen the cave, he'd have known. He'd have known they'd already taken it and they'd never have entered, or, at the very least, he'd have mentioned something about having had an accomplice once, or so I like to think. Ergo, it could only have been a Death Eater. A turncoat Death Eater, presumably, for the locket had no protections and, as far as I knew, the Black townhouse held no special meaning for Voldemort, unlike its original cave. Everyone thought I'd destroyed Voldemort in '81. No one would have gone looking to destroy him or leave a note for him to read if they thought he'd already been destroyed. A turncoat Death Eater from the first war; someone who couldn't have been born later then '64, probably a pure or half-blood, and probably not Rudolph Andrew Brand either, the Quidditch star who proposed to a Harpies player after beating them and got beat himself for his troubles. Yes, that was honestly the closest I'd come to finding out who R.A.B. might be before now, and, probably, as close as I would remain.

I felt myself being lowered onto a bed and was surprised by this – I didn't feel like I needed to rest at all. Hell, I'd barely noticed anything but him as he'd carried me from the attic. His arms were safe, were home… Maybe I needed a stiff drink, but a lie down? No – and left for a moment so that he could shout down the stairs, "Lupin, floo Poppy – she's hurt herself again," before turning back to me and asking, eyebrow raised, "You find a seventh of the Dark Lord's soul in the attic after you've been in a coma for a week and, quite naturally, you decide to take care of it without, say, warning us to have medical supplies on hand?"

Sighing, I struggled to sit up and decided that now was, probably, not time to debate about whether it was an eighth or a half or a whatnot, but found myself held down by one of Severus's warm, calloused hands. After the despair and fear I'd felt in the attic, it was all I could do not to sink into his touch. I settled for grabbing a handful of his shirt and kissing him mightily before having to be bothered with breathing. "I'm a Gryffindor, remember? We're idiotic and impulsive. I saw it and… And at least I called for you first; how was I to know that the door would lock itself? Can I get up now?"

"No."

"It's just my arm. It's not spitting out Basilisk venom anymore and, Merlin yes, it hurts like hell, but I'm mobile. Can I at least be tortured in the kitchen? There's food there. And, ostensibly, our children. I'd kinda like to see them. And I imagine Henri-Auguste is hungry."

"I thought you might prefer the bed rest I'm going to force upon you if you were in an actual bed, as opposed to strapped down to the kitchen table."

"A lot can happen in a week, obviously. Horcruces wind up in the attic, children are born; my husband gets into bondage…"

He rolled his eyes, but moved closer to me, examining my icy fingers. He couldn't see Tonks, who, with her hair short and spiked and pumpkin-y, had appeared in the doorway to see what I'd managed to do to myself this time. Though, from the way her face was quickly contorting to look like one of those people you see on the news sometimes saying books like Cat's Cradle and To Kill a Mockingbird, I supposed all she'd heard of the last part was, "…into bondage…" She seemed to change her mind halfway through, though, and gave herself instead flowing read hair and emerald green eyes…

"Technically," she said calmly, entering the room without tripping and making it all the way to one of the chairs by my bed before falling over her own two feet, "if it's bondage, it's you that hurt her, Snapey, not herself."

Professorially (and without looking around), he retorted, "I seem to recall an incident, Mrs. Lupin, in a seventh floor broom closet…" still turning my hands over in his.

She crunched up her face and returned it to her normal look, "I'll have you know I tripped into-"

I took my free hand and clapped it to my ear. "I don't want to hear about this," I said loudly, struggling to free my other hand or, at least, burry my other ear somewhere dark and far away, "I don't want to hear about this. I don't- Merlin, my hands are cold… Okay, neither of you can say a word about anything until my hands unfreeze. I guess there's a reason you're not supposed to shoot sauretodis without a wand… You haven't seen it, have you? I'd rather like it back…"

He gives me a look that says, "Isn't bad enough that you're taking on Horcruces the day you got out of a week-long coma? Do you really need to be battling slivers of the Dark Lord's soul without your (insert your choice of expletive here) wand?" I don't know what I was expecting next (probably something about the implication that I could shoot an Acid Death spell from your fingertips, id est, without a wand, as being ridiculous, foolhardy, and just plain impossible), but it certainly wasn't Tonks, propping her feet up on the edge of my bed and saying in a serious tone:

"Is that why it smells like burning tires up here? God, Ely, I know some of Sirius's records are horrible, but you couldn't have at least melted them outside?"

It was impossible not to snort at that. "Well, I did get into an argument with most of the contents of the attic, but the melting of things was completely accidental…" I trailed off uncertainly, suddenly curious as to if that green dragon hide jacket had survived. I was already quite taken with it and, Merlin willing, I'd be down to my pre-baby weight soon… And I was going to have to make sure I stayed that way. As in, I was going to have to get every form of birth control known to man and dog to make sure there wasn't another "accident." If Severus and I wanted more children, they'd better come when we wanted them…

"Why you turning so red?" the metamorphmagus asked. I flushed scarlet and hoped to Merlin that Severus wasn't trying legimancy on me this instant.

He didn't appear to be, but who knew? My husband, the greatest human being ever to exist (yes, I know, it is Severus I'm talking about), graciously changed the subject. "The Drs. Granger with the children?"

"What have I done," she sighed exasperatedly, "to make you think I'd leave two infants alone in this place?" Her arms flew into the air at that, and her hair turned a morose shade of turquoise. I'd never known turquoise to be morose until I'd met Tonks. She's told me once she'd gotten a book somewhere, something like a colour dictionary it was, and every day for the entirety of her Fourth Year she went through it and tried a new one; her parents had thrown a fit when she'd showed up to her (Muggle) cousin's wedding with Safety Orange hair. She claimed it was only alphabetical – she'd had rust-coloured hair the day before and saffron the day after – but she said it with such a look that it was hard to believe her.

Rolling his eyes in a way that told of seven years of reasons, he turned and looked at me, every ounce of him the exuding concern and protectiveness that had become all too common on him recently. I regretted that I'd been the source of so much of his pain… but Voldemort needed to be destroyed, and I was an idiot, and that pretty much covered all our possible options. "I've not seen anything like this in a while," he loosed my hands; "so do try to behave yourself while I make the potion?"

My look was one of, "Whenever have I not?" that didn't seem to satisfy him in the least, but he went to gather his potion things. I snuck down to the kitchen as soon as he was out of sight. Tonks, containing a laugh, did the same.

The Grangers did not seem to find it amusing that, one moment, I say I'm going to kip upstairs and see if I can find a leather jacket and clean the attic some before the bread's done, the next I'm hobbling down the stairs because my legs feel like jell-o with gold melted into my elbow, a couple of interesting scrapes, and hands that looked to be (according to Madam Pomprey, who flooed in as I went to stir the stew and discovered my wand in the drawer where we kept such spoons) in the second stage of frostbite.

I also, quickly, came to the conclusion that whatever Hermione had told them about Hogwarts, it included very little of the Darker side of things. They're house had been destroyed, their livelihoods taken away from them, by Death Eaters, and all they'd known was that some wizards didn't much care for those who weren't wizard-born. It must have been a shock, coming here, to a house that still hinted at evil despite Andi's attempts otherwise to find out there was a war going on, and that things they'd rather read about were happening right under their noses.

That, and, while I knew (I had been over to Hermione's house this summer a couple of times, though only knew them in brief hello before hiding out in their living room with a season of Deep Space Nine and oversized pot of popcorn sort of way) they knew that one of their daughter's school friends had asked her to be her child's godmother, it also seemed that she'd never bothered to explain said school friend was still in school with her.

Oh well, I lied to Hermione quite often myself. Still, it probably would've been good to know before Madam Pomprey, dragging me imperiously from the stove, forced me into a seat and began to lecture me on "the stupidity of going after things in forbidden corridors," "entering mythical chambers," "chasing escaped criminals," "fighting dragons, Grindylows, Dark Lords, and their assorted minions," and, most amusedly, "giving birth while comatose," because, apparently, it's hard to tell how far apart contractions are when the mother is writhing from dream-induced pain, let alone tell said mother when and when not to push.

"I didn't plan on being coma- ouch!" I insisted as she did a spell that made a scraping noise as a thin patina of gold came off my (now rather swollen) elbow, "It kinda just – hey – happened. And I had really good excuses for most of that." I smiled sheepishly at the nurse. "Any idea how I got in that coma?"

"You mean you don't know?"

"I wouldn't ask if I knew. Tonks?" I asked, twisting around to find my pseudo-cousin poking around in the cupboards, "If you want something to do so badly, I think the kids want dinner. Mind taking Claudia?" She didn't, though Claudia minded the mushy peas that Tonks managed to round up for her. The Grangers (who were, at this point, helping themselves to soup between Remus, who was looking more pensive then usual, and Victor Talbot, who was looking for Ari and, naturally, chose to stay for dinner while I was upstairs battling family heirlooms) showed the first sign of confusion when Tonks handed me Auguste and, casually tugging down my now grimy tank, I began to breastfeed my son.

"Well, you didn't just wish yourself into a coma – did you?" the nurse asked suspiciously, to which I did a Severus-style raise of eyebrows at her. "And what in Merlin's name did you do to yourself now? I only just finished patching you up."

"I thought you might be bored… What about you, Remus? What exciting things did you and Tonks do this week, besides watch me convalesce?"

Turns out, he'd spent the better part of the weekend obliviating every law enforcement officer between Cardiff and Newport after Death Eaters decided it'd be a good idea to go after Dirk Cresswell of the MoM-before-exile, who lived in Castleton between the too, not knowing he'd decided to go on an extended holiday to the French Riviera a few days before. Disappointed, they'd killed and/or tortured every Muggle in a two block radius, burned for three more, and destroyed a very important electrical substation, leaving a nice swath of the Welsh coast without power until Tuesday. Mr. Weasley had gone with him and gotten almost a mile of electrical wiring out of it. And a garage door opener. It was hard to tell which gift he was happier about, apparently. Tonks, being very pregnant (let me a pause for a moment to celebrate how I am, at last, not; being pregnant is hard work, as is most of the other stuff I've had to do over the past twenty-one months, and doing all of them at once is exhausting. And probably contributing to my insanity), had been… discouraged from going, and had instead been at the Siege of St. Mungo's, bolstering windows and wards, teasing Sirius, and "protecting" the children's ward.

My daughter flung peas at Tonks, going on in what was sure to be a child's version of contempt. "Claudia-Éléonore," I admonished her, "I don't care one way or another whether you eat your dinner or not, but your father might've something to say on the matter." I could've sworn she gave a resigned huff before, without tantrum, allowing Tonks to feed her the rest of the peas.

"Goody-two-shoes," the metamorphmagus huffed at the child. Then, conspiratorially, "You're making me look bad here; stop it. I know a guy who can get you a steal on some Venomous Tentacula seeds."

"Oh, no you don't," Remus said, face all seriousness while his eyes sparkled in a way that reminded me of a certain dead headmaster, "I'm still not fully healed from the last time you had me break into Pomona's greenhouses. Offer her the unicorn horns instead. We've got to get them off our hands before the Ministry raids our place again."

I gave a snort halfway between laughter and pain (pain because having a melted metal pulled from your skin was almost as painful as having molten metal pulled on your skin), and for my safety asked Victor Talbot what he'd been up to.

The room went deathly silent.

Well, not really. Claudia was still making Claudia noises, Auguste the proper Auguste noises as he fed, and the Grangers were making a few of their own as they continued to eat, but everyone else had gone quiet and still. I knew that silence. Thankfully, Henri-Auguste was beginning to tire at this point, and I was able to remove him from my breast without much trouble. I hiked my tank back up (desire to look professional and capable, I suppose, while acting as Minister kicking in) as I moved to put my son in the crib that remained by the Russian oven, he began to fuss though. "Demanding little thing," I sighed, but shifted him to a more comfortable position before proffering my arm for Madam Pomprey to continue working on; my fingers were feeling a little better, or so it seemed, because I could feel them shaking with slight fear at what was to come. Remus dealing with Death Eaters and blackouts near Cardiff I could handle. As awful and terrible as that was, it was too large and too impersonal for me to feel dreadfully terrible about – though I had seen the way the Grangers had looked when Remus, in his sad and casual way, had told me, and a part of me wished still to feel that pain, and a smaller part of me was glad that I no longer did – as was Tonks's doings at St. Mungo's. With Tonks, you could laugh about how ineffectual the Death Eater's were down on the Muggle street, largely doing nothing but boxing them in, which wasn't to say they weren't being damaging and trying to tamper with the floo and all that, but any day when they didn't grab some passing Muggles and do some unkind things to them was a good day in my book, because it was the rescue missions that cost us the most. Besides, Voldemort may have gotten the MoM building, may have installed a puppet government and whatnot, but the fact remained that the foreign MoMs acknowledged me, not him, and without outside help he wasn't yet strong enough to have his people doing magic in full view of Muggles and get rid of any sort of emergency services, government researches, and/or television newscasters that might show up (nor had he, presumably, to find a magical way of stopping modern Muggle weaponry). Hell, with Tonks one could even laugh over her continual argument with her cousin, because she thought it'd be a great idea for a sense of continuity at the Moskva Museum of Wizarding History's photo gallery (which was important for historical reasons, she'd continue, and as she'd start passing out Wizarding cameras to the patients) for everyone to stop calling The Siege of St. Mungo's exactly that and call it the Siege of Mungograd instead. When people would point out to her that the hospital wasn't exactly a city, as a name like "Mungograd" might suggest, she'd simply say that the facts weren't important, and history never bothered with them anyway.

As to why I was suddenly so scared of the silence that had fallen, I knew it meant two things: one, my pseudo-family wasn't happy about it or thought I'd be terribly unhappy about it and, two, anything that Victor (who was a lawyer-in-training and mainly sent to deal with the Muggle-end clean-up; there were others that fought for us, and who had died for us, and whose names I knew and counted as scars on my heart) might have to do to solicit this reaction could not be good indeed. "What happened," I said in all seriousness, by which it was understood, "Who died?" and, for those clearer thinking among us, "Please oh please oh please tell me it wasn't the Muggle Prime Minister, because I don't know how we can explain an assassination of him to the Muggle press. I mean, what would they assassinate him for? His views on cricket?"

After a moment, during which Victor Talbot set down his spoon, wiped his mouth on his napkin, and moved his bread around quite more then necessary, he said, "I've spent most of the week in Kingston-upon-Thames."

I couldn't think of anything terribly bad that might happen there of its own accord, so I prepared myself for news of an assassination. Or natural disaster. Or nuclear war. Hmm… Kingston-upon-Thames was in Surrey, and Surry awfully close to London. If a nuclear attack had gone on there, we'd probably be in the fall-out zone at HQ… Wait, Surrey- "How did she die?"

"Your aunt?" I nodded, waiting. The poison I'd fed her on my seventeenth birthday finally seemed to have caught up with her… What death could it have been? There were a thousand poisons nex ranae reginae could have manifested as… Was it quick or painful? Was it gruesome? If I wasn't already numb, I would have gone so while I waited for his answer; I would have been as still as a statue if only Madam Pomprey wasn't débriding gold from my arm…

"They did a lot to her, and she lost a lot of blood, but the ultimate cause of death was being impaled on number six's picket fence," he said quietly. I knew that fence. I'd whitewashed it the summer after Third Year for them, and planted the hollies that had quickly fallen to blight on its far side. I'd dug them up the summer after Fourth. The Dursleys would loan me out like that sometimes. I think they thought they were paying me, or working off a grounding, or something.

"So the poison made her crazy and she jumped out the window?"

"Er…" Victor said after a long, long pause, "No. She was pushed."

Defenestration then? How rarely that seemed to happen outside of Prague… it was such an interesting word, defenestration… as is amiticide, the killing of one's aunt… But I had poisoned her, though I didn't need too; I had taken the nex ranae reginae from Severus, though I knew my own temptations. I knew better, but still did. "…And when Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; and she painted her face, and tired head, and looked out at a window. And as Jehu entered in at the gate, she said, 'Had Zimri peace, who slew his master?' And he lifted up his face to the window, and said, 'Who is on my side? who?' And there look out to him two or three eunuchs. And he said, 'Throw her down.' So they threw her down: and some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall, and he trode her under foot…" was my response, and I held Auguste protectively to me.

Tonks looked at me, "Translation please?"

"…And when he was come in, he did eat and drink, and said, 'Go, see now this cursed woman, and bury her: for she is a king's daughter,'" said Severus, coming into the room with something that, even from here, smelled strongly of eucalyptus and mint. "And they went to bury her: but they found no more o her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands.'"

"Kings II 9:30-35," I sighed. "So who pushed her? Vernon? What form did the poison take, or-?"

"It wasn't the poison. Death Eaters attacked Privet Drive while you were asleep… I believe their thought process was to draw you out, since you'd been gone from Hogwarts since Friday."

"You would think," said the nurse, yanking off another layer of gold from my elbow (which seemed to be getting no thinner), "that they would realize by now that the only time you're ever out of sight is when you're trapped with me."

Tonks, hair a curious shade of Mountbatten pink, "I think the more pressing question is: how on earth did the two of them know that?"

"They read?" her husband offered, pouring himself a fresh cuppa. "I always found the defenestration of Jezebel one of the more bothersome parts. I've always found fanatics who don't overly bother themselves about genocide a bothersome sort."

Deadpan, "I've changed my mind; the most pressing concern is this: where do you read words like defenestration?"

I'd remained quiet throughout this all. It took me a moment to process what had been said. All the pain I'd put myself through, all of the suffering – and for what? for my well-laid murder not even to pan out? for someone else to kill her? It was almost farcical. Disappointing and farcical. And impossible. I'd gotten used to the impossible happening around me, but I'd poisoned my aunt! I deserved to the pain of having her die because of that. I was the one who ought to have the pleasure of murdering her, of watching her go through as much pain as she'd put me through, all those years of virtual slavery she'd sent my way. I was her sister's daughter! She was supposed to love me – and, because she did not, I wanted it to be me who saw her to the final end, not some masked agent of my enemy who thought it might hurt me to see her go. I cared so little for her actual death that even sitting in HQ, holding my infant son and surrounded by people I loved, trying to goad myself into feeling something, the only emotion welling in me at all was a desire to laugh at the insanity of it all…

I didn't ask about Vernon. If they attacked Azkaban South, most likely he was dead too; if not, I really didn't care. On the other hand… "Dudley? He was at Smeltings, yes, when it happened – or did they go after him to?"

"He's fine, or as fine as you can expect him to be, finding out his parents were murdered." That was good, I guess. As much as I disliked my cousin, he was the victim (if differently a victim) here almost as much as I was. "I've spent a lot of time in Kingston-upon-Thames," the seat of Surrey, "setting up a trust for your cousin – enough to hold him through his last year of school and university – and falsifying their wills. Named you the executrix, of course, though not under your own name, in case the Death Eaters get smart and try to find you that way. No, as far as anyone is concerned, the executrix of your aunt and uncle's estate is Alexandria Black, and you're a lawyer at Clifford Chance."

Clumsily pinching the bridge of my nose, "Thanks Victor, I guess." My fingers were pulled from my face and dunked in the unguent Severus had produced. It was one of those things where you couldn't tell if it was hot or cold, only that it burned some, but before long I began to feel tingles in my fingers… and they awoke… During which the conversation turned to other things…

From Hermione's father, an exclamation of surprise. "Éléonore, you look quite young to have too such small children."

"I am quite young. Pass the salt?"

From her mother, slight confusion at what appeared to her a mixing of the facts, "I thought you said you were a professor at Hermione's school."

"I am – you don't need special degrees to teach in the Wizarding world. You can do it right out of school if someone wants to hire you; in my case, they didn't wait."

"Wait?"

"'Til I was out of school. I'm a Seventh Year, more or less. Please tell me someone thought to pick up dessert, or I'm going to have to break into the emergency Dementor stash." My elbow, now given up on for the moment and bandaged, followed me to the cabinets as I opened and closed them in search of chocolate.

"There should still be some biscuits in there somewhere," Remus offered before turning to the Drs. Granger. "If it helps you any, Éléonore is the strong witch I know. Maybe even stronger then Dumbledore was-"

"Remus!" I exclaimed in embarrassment.

"It's true, though. You're strong. And Dumbledore shared something with you before he was murdered, something that can end this war."

Severus decided to add his two Knuts worth, "Uncharismatic, feeble, seventeen-year-old witches don't often become Minister of Magic."

I stuck my tongue out at him and, grabbing an unopened package of biscuits and a litre of milk, I began my march upstairs. "Just for that, you can put your daughter to bed yourself."

I was on the third step when one of the Granger's asked what my outburst was all about. "Hormones," was what Severus replied.

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I lay in bed atop the covers. It was dark. My elbow ached, but more from the awkward weight of the gold that remained then from the Basilisk venom that was trapped beneath it. Auguste was asleep in the crib that had taken the place of one of the wingbacks by the fire.

I was lying on my back; my right leg was bent a little, and raised at a slight angle. My left hand was flung above me, just out of reach of the headboard. My toes could just feel the edge. My right hand rest on my stomach, thumb just below and to the right of my navel, ring finger resting on the band of my pyjamas; pinky resting on the join between my leg and torso. A part of me dimly wondered where Paracelsus had gotten too.

My eyes stared straight upwards as my thoughts spiralled. I tried to find a quote, a passage that I could name that could tell the world what I was feeling now. I'd prepared myself to be the murderer, to take the responsibility for the ending of a life, and now, finding out that my plans had failed, I could only compare to being pregnant and still-birthing at the last instant, or being told you have cancer only to find out the tests were wrong three months later. I'd prepared myself for something life-altering and then, suddenly, out of no where, it falls threw. The bottom drops. Was I still a murderer if I'd given her a fatal poison, but she'd died of something else first? Was I still a murderer if it'd been my intent all along to see her cold and rotting in the ground?

Long after Severus put Claudia to bed and joined me himself, I lay awake thinking.

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The motorbike's name was Ariah and today it was red. A portkey had taken the two of us from HQ to Rotherhithe, about an half-hour away, so I'd plenty of time to think as I rode towards St. Mungo's, being careful to take the most circuitous root possible.

I wore the dragonhide jacket and no helmet as I zoomed at inappropriate speeds through sleeping city streets. My hair whipped behind me wildly, and it almost felt like I was flying again. There were bags under my eyes carefully concealed by careful application of make-up and concealing spells. It didn't fool Severus, who must have noticed my inability to sleep last night.

I came to the conclusion sometime around two in the morning, after feeding Auguste a second time, that …war meant murdering the same man over and over, and that in the end I would discover the man was myself… How many times, after all, had I destroyed Horcruces? The locket, the diadem, the diary – I was killing Voldemort, over and over again, in little bits and pieces, like… like whatever analogue you could think of.

It was… dissatisfying. How many lives had I taken? I do not want to know. It was sickening also, a familiar nausea that I wish wasn't so familiar and, in all fairness, I can't attribute to Auguste anymore.

Could it only have been yesterday that I'd destroyed Slytherin's locket, found through chance alone in my adoptive father's attic rather then in the Marshes-of-the-Dead-esque cave that had helped to cost Dumbledore his life? Only the week before that I'd taken Ravenclaw's diadem from its tampon-riddled hiding place and driven Gryffindor's sword threw it? The familiar desire to end this all had grown while I could not sleep from an itch to an almost impossible rash. The Resurrection Stone ring was destroyed, as was Riddle's diary. That left only Hufflepuff's cup, which was hidden only Voldemort-knew-where, and the something else.

I'd tried finding the something going down the same root I'd gone with Ravenclaw – Voldemort would have, if possible, made that last Horcrux out of something of Gryffindor's. But the only two known extant things of Gryffindor's were his sword (which, besides being coated in Basilisk venom and therefore not likely to be a Horcrux now, if it ever was one, was also a sign of power, which Voldemort could not have) and the sorting hat. If there were any other things, I did not know them and had yet to find them. Unlike Ravenclaw, Gryffindor's children had gone on to have other children and heirs; if anything of his had been passed down through the years, I was not a talented enough genealogist to go down the line and find it or whatever pawn broker's descendants they might have sold it to unknowingly – and come up empty. I'd searched the castle from top to bottom, found forgotten secrets and chambers unknown. If other hiding holes, like the Chamber of Secrets or the Room of Requirements existed, they were too hidden for me to find.

I'd tried finding it by thinking of places outside Hogwarts it might be hidden – but that too had come up dry. Voldemort wanted places of strength. Places where he was strong. He was strong at Hogwarts, the Heir of one of the Founders. He was strong at the Gaunt House, the site of his mother's childhood and his patricide. He was strong at the cave, the place of his highest power in childhood. The diary was designed to return to the Chamber, the wellspring of his supposéd power. Every other place I could trace him to was worthless even to search, for why would he hide a Horcrux in St. Giles' Orphanage, his own Azkaban South? Once again, I'd tried thinking of all the places I might hide seven Horcruces, but perhaps I was too practiced in people trying to kill me then Tom Riddle had been when he was my age, for I kept on thinking along the lines of an artefact in the burial chamber of a pyramid in Egypt, an interestingly-shaped rock in a hard-to-reach cave near the top of Mt. Everest, or, I dunno, something else along thoI'se lines. But Tommy Riddle had restricted himself, whatever the reason, to somewhere in the eight hundred and six miles between Thruso and Falmouth. And if England was special to him, then the remaining two Horcruces had to be in England. But, for Merlin's sake, I couldn't think of anywhere else that might be important to him, so they had to be places important only to him, and I wasn't exactly a mind reader – and come up empty. I'd been in no position, granted, to search across the country for the artefact that I'd no idea what it might actually be.

So I was forced into this. The war had already gone on for far too long. I feared by waiting more would die, or Voldemort would create more and more Horcruces until he'd be unstoppable. I needed to make him afraid. People who were afraid did stupid things. I needed Voldemort to be stupid, to fear for the safety of those slivers of his soul that he'd hidden throughout the country. I needed him to make a mistake. I needed for him to seek to protect that which made him vulnerable. If my thought process was right, if I 'taunted' the Death Eaters with the destruction of one Horcrux, they'd tell their master and he'd send men to the cave, to the Gaunt House, and to other places, places unknown to me, where the Cup was hidden, where the something else was hidden. I hoped I was right.

Even if I was wrong, Voldemort would still be scared, I think, and he'd come for the Elder Wand. He'd kill Draco Malfoy, and then he'd be able to take the Wand of Destiny from Dumbledore's tomb at the water's edge and be, supposedly, invincible. And, if it came to that, I would have to fight him.

My body was bruised. No one had any idea why I'd collapsed into a coma on Valentine's Day or snapped out of it a week later. I did not understand my oneiric fantasies of Harry, the boy-that-was-me-but-wasn't. I did not understand why, some nights, I dreamt of Niynhi and her forested hollow.

Hollows.

Horcruces

Before I knew it I'd turned onto the street where Death Eaters held siege to St. Mungo's. Pulling a WWW flash-bang from my pocket, I revved the engine and drove the motorcycle straight through the crowd, dropping the explosive behind me. As soon as I was past what the Twins told me was the immediate blast range, I slammed on the breaks and jerked the wheel left, spinning and skidding me back 'round to face them.

There was silence in the aftershock. Then, through caponiers in the higher floors, KoRT aurors and trained wizards started to rain down spells, while others, hidden across the street, flung up anti-apparition and –portkey wards. My own wand slid from its holster into my palm, and the battle was joined.


	33. In Which I Learn the Meaning of Love

I knew it was a dream because he was there, though I did not see him at first. It was a party – a birthday, I think, because there was a cake with candles on it. The candles sparkled with green and purple flames while the family called out, "Happy Fifteenth," to a young girl with Severus's nose, my eyes, and pin-straight blonde hair. Maybe it was because of all the people around her, smiling and looking happy, but I felt drawn to the child as she leaned down, pulling her hair back and to one side, and blew out the candles.

"Elle est votre arrière-petite-fille la plus vieille, Alexandria Henriette Acton," the panther spoke, head butting under my hand as I stood there so I'd no choice but to stroke her. She is your oldest great-granddaughter.

I'd already gathered that from the mass of people gathered on the large, open green. In the short distance, I could make out a comfortable-sized house of Elizabethan style. It was the only home near, yet there were easily a hundred people, if not more, gathered. There were faces I recognized – Tonks and Remus, Bill and Fleur, Ari, Sirius, Severus, and so on – but they were, like me, lined with age and more then a little grey. There were others two, faces that, if I looked at hard enough, I could see as Claudia and Henri-Auguste, their visages almost as wizened as my own. Quick mental calculations told me that, if I had great-grandchildren turning fifteen, then I was more or less a hundred. Sirius, Severus, Remus, and Ari more or less a hundred twenty. But I was there too, seventeen and standing, some small distance off, next to Niynhi the panther. It was a confusing thing to contemplate, even in a dream. "Is that so?" My hands wanted to rise - one to my face, stroking the youthful skin there, and the other towards Alexandria Acton, as if to do the same. Great-grandchildren like her and, presumably, at least one of the many children gathered 'round her, meant grandchildren, which in turn meant that my children had had children…

"Sim. Você tem seis crianças por este ponto. Trinta e um netos. Uns número bisnetos bons." Her head gestured towards the dream-me, where I was laughing next to Severus, who looked a little put-out, but not terribly so. He was as white haired as I remembered Dumbledore as being, though he kept it much shorter then the headmaster ever had. Yes. You have six children by this point. Thirty-one grandchildren. A good number of great-grandchildren. I goggled a little even as I suppressed a slight smile – Severus, I noticed, was still wearing black. "Tra i due di lei, lei ha creato una dinastia minore." Between the two of you, you have created a minor dynasty.

Before I could look closer and find my promised unborn children, now grey, or pick out which of the adults there gathered might be one of my – Merlin! – thirty-one grandchildren, now grown and with children of their own from the faces that resembled mine, at the people who proved that I lived, that my family lived, and that Voldemort would, in the end, die, the Niynhi began to draw me away from the lawn and towards the dark and foreboding forest I had not realized ringed this place. "Este futuro se hace más cierto;" she said as she led me quickly through the thickly forested edge and into the clearing I knew so well. Though it had been late afternoon at the party for Alexandria Acton, it was deep of night here. The stars were out and there was a chill in the air. I looked up; the only constellation I could make out was Orion, the hero, arrayed with his belt of stars, "es casi posible que usted tenga éxito en su esfuerzo. Pero..." She did a quick circuit of the vale's edge, leaving me staring upwards at the centre. This future is becoming more certain; it is almost possible you will succeed in your endeavour. But...

I looked towards the feline, no longer surprised to see words or genuine emotion pouring from such an unusual face, at this last. "But?" I echoed. I did not like the sound of it at all. I wanted this future – or, at the very least, one like it. Its opposite was likely to mean my failure.

"Sed… acta diurnal Aenigmae evertisti. Anulus Perevellorum everterit, ac diadema Rowenae atque torquis Salazari erint. Et evertisti poculum Helgae…" I nodded slowly. But… you have destroyed Riddle's diary. The Perevell ring is destroyed, as are Rowena's diadem and Salazar's locket. And you have destroyed Helga's cup… It was true, over the last month-and-a-half three things had happened: first, Claudia-Éléonore turned a year old; next, Tonks gave birth during Easter brunch to my godson, Theodore Remus Lupin, whose hair was already learning to osculate through Tonks's favourite shades of turquoise; and, third, my 'taunting' of Death Eaters at the Siege of St. Mungo's had led to nearly all attacks being ended – except those made on Diagon Ally, which grew more extreme and more frequent in number. Had things been as they were even a year before, I would have called it a scare tactic – terrorists caused the most terror in public places, and there was no Wizarding place so public as Diagon and the other Allies. But this was not a year ago, and my 'taunting' did appear to have succeeded. Feelers had been sent out to the cave and the Gaunt house, or, at least, their general locale: a distinct presence that was not there before and remained now, only watching, doing nothing.

Two nights ago, Severus, Fleur, Bill, and I had raided Gringotts. It was hard, getting the Goblins to let us into the vaults we wanted and, in the end, they only agreed to let us enter the private vaults of the Death Eaters I'd killed myself – because, they said, it was my due for killing them. Bill explained to me later as something along the lines of, "You keep what you kill," when it came to magical powers and wealth (weapons and jewellery returned to the family of the dead, or at least, I think that's what he said; it might have been magic and weapons; I'm not entirely sure). Still, we were lucky. Very lucky. Three hours canvassing Malfoy Sr.'s vault. Two hours in Trixie's – and then, miraculously, that which we were looking for appeared! I was half-tempted to shout to the heavens when my hands were upon the Cup, feeling how cold and how Dark this thing which had once been Hufflepuff's most beloved item, "…then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God…" but, no matter how phenomenal it may have seemed even to I, a witch who could do things with magic that I would not explain with physics, I couldn't help but think that a miracle should have cost fewer lives and left less terror in its wake. We'd been through every other plausible place in the Allies – a miracle would have suited us better then, during the month-and-a-half we spent ruling those places out.

I don't say anything of these things to Niynhi. For all I know, she is an angel come to help me. Or a demon. Or a manifestation of a deluded mind. Or something else. I don't know what. But, whatever it may be keeping me alive – God or gods or luck or random chance – I'm not going to risk pissing anybody or anything off.

Back to the point though, two nights ago we had found it, though Fleur and Bill had no idea what it was we found. Last night we had destroyed it, Severus banishing the greasy black cloud that had poured fourth from its bowl as I sliced the thing clean in two with Gryffindor's Sword. He felt the Darkness and its bitter bite, but swore there was no strange chorus singing baroque classics. All of the Horcruces were destroyed but one, the one that I did not know the identity of… but I was working on that!

The panther continued on, not knowing or caring of my mental digression, "Attamen duas horcruxum restant." I smiled and nodded, prepared to tell her my case, before realizing what it was she'd said: But two Horcruces remain.

"Two!" I sputtered, spinning on Niynhi as if she herself had created another for me to destroy.

"Yes," came a voice from the side, a voice I had heard only in dreams. I quickly turned my head, already knowing the sight as it materialized out of the darkness – a young version of my father, though not much younger then he'd been when he'd died, with my mother's eyes – and, for a moment, forgot all about Horcruces:

He was dressed in school robes and there as a patina of sweat upon him. It could only have been seconds I looked upon him, but it seemed like I held him for hours under my scrutiny in that dark and starlit hollow and, as I did, a picture quickly adumbrated of a young boy who'd experienced the selfsame horrors as I had, who'd seen a Dark Lord rise and cold bodies fall; who'd been dragged into the mess of Horcruces and Hollows and away from the job of filling caretakers' offices with tapioca that a schoolchild should have. It was the look in his eyes, I think, that was so exactly the same as mine, which broke through enough to allow me to believe – though what it was I was believing, I did not immediately know.

Niynhi gave a soft exhalation, which misted silver and grey in the pale light. There, for both of us – Harry and I – to see was a scene we both knew: Dumbledore, tapping one of his silver instruments gently with his wand from Christmas… two, three years ago. From the instrument in the memory that the fog held, several tiny puffs of deep green smoke appeared, writhing and coiling in midair until a snake had formed. Its jaws opened wide, revealing the Darkness beyond its maw, and spat out a second snake, identical to itself, coiling and undulating in the fog-silver air. Above this, slightly out of focus, the headmaster muttered words that made no more sense now then they did then, "Naturally, naturally. But in essence divided?" The fog of her breath faded, and we stood, looking at the panther, me, with a sense of growing confusion; him, with a sense sad inevitability. She then spoke again, "Harry James Potter, however unknowingly, made a deal with Fate: the life of Sirius Orion Black, however begotten. Fate honoured his choice. That deal is why Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Potter exists."

I felt the ground sidle up and embrace every inch of me as the shock rolled in waves over me, my mind trying to make sense of what I'd been told, whatever it meant. Being told that the only reason you exists is because of something or other you don't understand, I would believe, is never pleasant. My mind honestly quite refused to believe it and, without luck, tried to wake me up from this nightmare.

Glumly (his glum tone, with the not-minor consideration that he was male and I was not, was exactly the same as mine), I heard him sit next to me. "They explained it to me, once. I've had a lot of time to think over it while I've been here… wherever here is, why-ever I'm still around. The Sirius of my reality died in the Department of Mysteries, where he only was because I was there, and where I only was because I thought he was there and no one in the Order knew. I did tell Snape," (I remembered too the vitriol with which I'd once said his name, and this was it), "but didn't think he believed me."

The panther took over, nuzzling my side with her head before curling up next to me. "Sirius Orion Black would not have died if you had believed Severus Eteocles Snape believed you. There was no reason for you to believe this as you were; there was too much mutual dislike. For you to believe him, you must not dislike Severus Eteocles Snape as much as you did, and for that to happen, he must not dislike you similarly. He disliked you for your resemblance to your father. It was merely changed that you should look more like your mother instead… so you could like each other more… so you could believe in him… so Sirius Orion Black would live. So it was, so it is, and so it shall be."

A part of my mind was screaming at this impossibility, but another, which recorded all the impossibilities of my life, was halfway to believing. "I… Why can't you just leave me alone?" I decided abruptly to play along. "I don't care if you're me or I'm you or this is something else entirely. You gave up your life, or your chance at mine, or whatever. It's mine. I've not done all I've done and killed and sacrificed and watched people die just so someone else can live my life." I paused, took in a shaking breath, and continued. "I don't know who you really are, but, in my world, Sirius is alive. Severus is happy and things are under control. Hell, I'm happy. I'm married and have children, for Merlin's sake! So just tell me why you brought me here, why you seem to think that there are two more Horcruces left when I've destroyed six of the seven."

Niynhi gave a slight growl, then spoke, as if reiterating a point to Harry, not speaking to me at all: "Destino ha hablado. No cambiamos Tiempo ligeramente. Todos se quedarán como es ahora. Harry James no son más. El mundo es para Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette ahora." He sighed. Fate has spoken. We do not change Time lightly. All will stay as it is now. Harry James is no more. The world is for Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette now. I too gave a sigh of relief. I knew instinctively that if either had expected me to give up my life, whatever the reason, so someone else could live it, I'd have done everything in my power to keep it from happening. Even if dreams like these rarely ended well… I still wanted to wake up now – especially now – and wake Severus beside me and ask that he hold me or, when I felt stronger, go to the chest that was still locked in my bathroom vanity and pull out the Resurrection Stone and ask Dumbledore, my svengali still, however dead, to explain why my dreams didn't even make sense to me.

"Lei ha diviso le ricordi di Harry James. Alcuni che noi non potevamo fermarci. Altri che lei ha avuto bisogno di riuscire." I looked at her curiously, drawing myself onto my elbow. You have shared Harry James's memories. Some we could not stop. Others you have needed to succeed.

"Mas este aqui precisou de nossa explicação primeiro. Nós precisamos que você acreditasse." But this one needed our explanation first. We needed you to believe.

"I don't want to – just let me go," I begged, looking towards the forest edge and knowing that, if I ran, worse would happen to me then words. "Just let me wake up. If you aren't going to take away my life, just let me wake up."

"Dites-elle." Tell her. "Dites-elle maintenant." Tell her now.

And so he did.

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The windows were dark in the office I'd come to know so well. The sky was clouded sporadically, signalling the coming of spring storms. The faint hooting of owls and chirp of insects could be heard, and, seeming not quite at ease with himself as always, Fawkes could be seen perched in the corner, pretending not to watch studiously. I wondered what had become of Fawkes since Dumbledore's death. Had he found another wizard, Light, to be his companion? Was he disconsolate with his death? Maybe he'd even chosen (if it was possible) to die a final death so as to be with him in whatever afterlife phoenixes believed in… Paracelsus thought he was in Ebeneu, Austria, though why he wouldn't say, and had even attempted to get post owls to take him there, though, needless to say, he'd failed.

Both Severus – not my Severus, but the one who looked older then he should and far more ragged then even that. His Severus, who wasn't his at all – and the firebird sat stalk still. Somewhat compulsively, Dumbledore paced his office while speaking. The fire cast strange shadows on his face as he walked, illuminating him (too) entirely one moment and casting him in deep shadow the next; with each extreme, I could see the man who'd loved Gellert Grindlewald, believing wholeheartedly in anything for the greater good, and the man who'd been forced to capture him. It was the same man who had seen Riddle as a child and the adult he'd become, unable to stop what should not have seemed to inevitable. I could say something about him being the man who'd watched me grow as well, and quote Freud liberally as I say, "No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed," but felt that would be melodramatic. There was already too much melodrama here. I wished to promptly wake up so I could forget this dream… but others, like this one, had been real, and even in dreams I knew that.

The Headmaster spoke. "Harry must not know until the last moment, not until it is necessary, otherwise how could he have the strength to do what must be done?"

"But what must he do?" the man who, in another reality, was my husband asked, a tad bit of impatience creeping in. The same kind of annoyance that had cropped up when Dumbledore started referencing A House at Pooh Corner during our wedding. The memory made me smile and tighten my arms around my chest. She had said the dream was possible, and I might live to see Alexandria Acton's fifteenth birthday – that there might be an Alexandria Acton.

In his tergiversant way, "That is between Harry and me. Now listen closely, Severus. There will be a time – after my death – do not argue, do not interrupt! There will come a time when Lord Voldemort will seem to fear for the life of his snake."

Astonished, "For Nagini?"

"Precisely. If there comes a time when lord Voldemort stops sending that snake forth to do his bidding, but keeps it safe beside him under magical protection, then, I think, it will be safe to tell Harry."

"The snake is the seventh Horcrux?" I asked, but there was no one who could hear me. So I wrapped my arms tighter still and tried to call forth my earlier dream. Six children. Thirty-one grandchildren. A number of great-grandchildren. I had to live. I had to live so I could have four more children (though, I strenuously state, not until the new millennium, or, at the very least, Claudia and Henri-Auguste could talk and feed themselves) and they, in time, could average five point two children each for me to pamper shamelessly and if each of those had two children each… a minor dynasty.

"Tell him what?"

As I was contemplating names for my promised four children, he took a deep breath. I tried very hard not to hear. Julia, I decided for a daughter. Alexandre for my next son. "Tell him that on the night Lord Voldemort tried to kill him, when Lily cast her own life between them as a shield, the Killing Curse rebounded upon Lord Voldemort," (I knew this already; it was the story of my life; let me wake up), "and a fragment of Voldemort's soul was blasted apart from the whole," (breathing became difficult and my pulse loud in my ears), "and latched itself onto the only living soul in that collapsing building." (I was indeed gasping now. If there were, in fact, two Horcruces and this was, in fact, true and not a demented imagining brought about by any range of things I could pay someone to think up for me, then, then…) "Part of Lord Voldemort lives inside of Harry," (and, according to the panther who was, theoretically, my spirit guide or guardian angel or whatever else people believe exist I was, theoretically, not just Harry Potter through some mistake on behalf of a stupid computer, but was, somehow, someway, in another reality the Harry of which they spoke. A he), "and it is that which gives him the power of speech with the snakes," (but Claudia could speak to snakes to, and so, either she'd learned this talent or the sliver of which Dumbledore spoke had travelled from my body into hers and then I must-!), "and a connection with Lord Voldemort's mind that he has never understood." (I understand it alright, old man. A part of Riddle? Inside of me? Just as there was inside of Nagini? Inside the Cup and the Locket and the Diadem and the Ring and the Diary? So, to destroy him, I must-), "And while that fragment of soul, unmissed by Voldemort, remains attached to and protected by Harry, Lord Voldemort cannot die."

I felt cold. Numb. Distant. If this wasn't a dream, I'd say I was having a distinct out of body experience. Everything was coming to me from a long tunnel, their voices strangely soft and echoing; their features fuzzy and indiscernible. A equals B equals C. It was clear, and yet…

"So the boy…" (how could his voice be so calm? Even in this reality he hated me, how could it be so calm?) "the boy must die?"

"And Voldemort himself must do it, Severus. That is essential"

Almost too faint to hear as I felt myself being pulled farther and farther away, my head spinning, "I thought… all these years… that we were protecting him for her. For Lily."

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I wad dead awake in seconds, no sleep or shadows clouding my mind. I was curled on my left side, my right partially sprawled across Severus's bare chest. I wore only a light robe, which was now carelessly hanging open, Auguste curled against my breast, protectively shielded from the outside world. Dimly, in the part of my mind that recognized such human, every day things, I remembered waking to feed him… I must have fallen asleep, as had he. I remembered too Claudia had woken at the noise and insisted on being allowed in our bed, and, yes, there she was, in her blue pyjamas, curled into Severus's other side. One of his arms was wrapped around her; the other was functioning as both my pillow and backrest. The blanket was thrown off us and tangled in our legs. A familiar weight near my ankle was humming heart-rendingly, the other two heads singing softly, "When the dark wood fell before me and all the pathsss were overgrown, when the priestsss of pride say there isss no other way, I tilled the sorrowsss of stone."

"I did not believe because I could not see, though you came to me in the night, when the dawn seemed forever lost. You showed me your love in the light of the starsss."

"Cast your eyesss on the ocean."

"Cast your soul to the sea."

"When the dark night seemsss endlessss, please remember me."

They were all so very warm. But, despite my heart beating fast, fluttering against my chest and pounding in my head, I felt oddly cold. My thoughts, too, were still, stalled on a single inevitability I recognized but could not ready myself for.

I must die.

I must die.

I must die.

Rationally, I acknowledged that I would die. One day. Preferably in my bed, in my sleep, when my hair had gone white and I'd great-grandchildren like Alexandria Acton to carry on to future generations whatever it meant to be me.

But the larger part of me understood at last that I was not supposed to survive. I had cheated death too many times over my short life and now I was supposed to submit myself willingly to Death's debt collection? Was that why Dumbledore had never put up much of a resistance against Severus and me? why he'd agreed to be the pseudo-grandfather of my daughter – simply to let me squeeze as much of living into my short years as I could?

Even now, his betrayal was almost nothing; the anger I'd felt towards him in the beginning for leaving me had vanished as if, at last, every feeling but love and sorrow had disappeared in me for the dead. The Resurrection Stone still sat, blemished up unbroken, in the cabinet below my bathroom sink but never again, even if I lived the rest of the lifetime that should have been promised to me, would I use it. I knew that now. …I'm sick of death. I want life!

No, I'd simply been to childishly foolish to see it, ridiculously blind not to see it before. I had always assumed that, when I saw Dumbledore as a grandfather, he saw me as a grandchild in turn and, like all decent grandparents, wanted me to live. But no. My life had never been in my hands, not when I "vanquished" Voldemort as a child, not when I married Severus, not now – no, it had always been determined by how long it took me to find and destroy all Voldemort's Horcruces. Or, should I say, all his other Horcruces. And I had never questioned it, stupid child that I was! Why should I have felt honoured, privileged and, yes, burdened that he'd chosen only me to share the secret to Voldemort's immortality that he'd found? Since it was so important, he should have had armies on it, not one half-grown witch like me – or, at the very least, told wiser, stronger wizards; ones with fewer Dark leanings or people who'd like to kill me. But no! He'd kept it neat and orderly, risking only the minimum number of lives necessary and even then only those the one doomed already to die, whose death would be a calamity to no one but my family, a blow against Voldemort.

I was a Horcrux. The inadvertent Horcrux.

That could be the title of my biography, when they write it – it is not vanity, just truth. Except no one but Severus would know of Horcruces then… and he must never tell a soul, or risk that another Dark Lord of this calliper will arise. They could call it Shadows of the World or Mirror Cracked from Side to Side or something like – but perhaps that was too morose a take on it.

Morose! I'd dreamed a dream I'd no reason, however much I might like to, to disbelieve. A fragment was broken off the soul when one murdered. Fragments that murderers kept secreted away to keel themselves alive were Horcruces. A fragment had broken off Voldemort's soul the Halloween night he killed my parents. The fragment had attached itself to me. Ergo, I was a Horcrux. The logic was sound.

My throat was dry. Severus's heart pounded out a steady rhythm as I pressed myself more tightly to him. Paracelsus was still humming at the foot of the bed: "Then the mountain rose before me by the deep well of desire, from the fountain of forgivenessss, by the ice and the fire."

"Cast your eyesss on the ocean."

"Cast your soul to the sea."

"When the dark night seemsss endlessss, please remember me."

And still my mind was frozen with the same moribund thoughts. I must destroy Nagini. And then I must, like a good little girl, find Voldemort and let him kill me. An AK for the start of my life, an AK to end it. Symmetrical. Neat. Tidy.

And then someone else could kill the bastard. But Claudia and Auguste would still be motherless. Severus, my darling Severus, would still be a widower. Alone. With no one there who could see past the block that he put up and that would only solidify with my death. My friends and family would still have to go on without me. And Voldemort would be dead, so they could.

My lungs were seizing up, my stomach clenching; my heart racing. Nothing made sense. I knew I could fight it, but knew equally well that I wouldn't. Voldemort would come soon. And he would kill me. My body would decay. It would pass through pallor mortis into algor mortis and all the other mortes until I was no more then my component atoms. And these would feed and be taken up by the grass that would grow above my grave – soft, untamed ghost's breath – long before Claudia or Auguste was old enough for school. And by the time they were old enough to understand why I had had to leave them, this would have happened dozens of times over, the grass dying and feeding more grass and creating more seeds that create new grass that feed whatever it is that makes grass until… My grave will be my grave, and I will be buried there, but I will not remain there. I will live on in the grass and the grass-eaters and all the atoms of my being, which once belonged to other beings, and in the memory of those who loved me, who are so many I still don't quite grasp how it happened.

But I'm still scared. Oh, God, so deaf and dumb and blind! Teach me to be resigned to be an atom! I don't know whether to tell Severus, or Sirius, or anyone. I don't know if I can stand all the seconds and minutes and hours until this inevitable end. I'd been prepared to die if necessary – prepared to loose myself to the Darkness and, inevitably, be killed. But not for this. Not for the knowledge that the only success, the only way to win is for me to die first, without seeing the job won. I like to think I could have handled that kind of death. But no. Neither would live. Neither would survive.

I wanted to live! I wanted with all my heart and mind and body and soul and magic and everything else that could be pledged to live – and not just as the grass of graves! I wanted to be that hundred-year-old woman Niynhi had shown me in a dream. I wanted four more children I could give French and Roman-sounding names, even if not at right this instant or not even soon. I wanted them to have five point two children a piece who'll give them grandchildren of their own, the oldest of which would be named Alexandria Henriette Acton. I wanted to go on teaching, maybe one day become a lawyer like Ari, and become famous for something other then this gruesome war or, preferably, not become famous at all.

But that wasn't a choice, was it? It didn't matter if I was me or Harry or whatnot, Fate said we had to die. No matter how much I wanted to rebel.

Paracelsus was still singing softly his tune, "Though we share this humble path, alone, how fragile isss the heart! Oh to give these clay feet wingsss to fly to touch the face of the starsss!"

"Breathe life into this feeble heart. Lift this mortal veil of fear. Take these crumbled hopesss, etched with tearsss; we'll rise above these earthly caresss."

"Cast your eyesss on the ocean."

"Cast your soul to the sea."

"When the dark night seemsss endlessss, please remember me."

"Please remember me."

Who would care for Paracelsus after I was gone? He was still a baby, only two-and-a-half years old. Claudia was certainly too young for it. Would he go off, as Fawkes apparently had, to Ebeneu, Austria? What would happen to him?

It was Friday. May Day, if I remembered correctly. I knew I should try to sleep. I'd have class in a few hours. But I couldn't waste what little time might remain to me dreaming of other worlds and maddening places: I was too in love with what I had here to risk forgetting them that way.

Quite naturally, there were no windows in the dungeons, and even as dawn approached with chalk-dusted fingers that I might never see again, it stayed dark in our den. There were no shadows for me to watch dancing as I lay awake all morning, waiting for what could be deemed a reasonable hour to wake the man at my side. A part of me ached to leave already, to dust and polish and clean until all my nervous energy was run, but I fought against the desire. This could well be my last day alive; why spend it in meaningless labour when I could lie here in bed with my loved ones?

Still, even if there'd been shadows I wouldn't have watched them anyway. I might have thought it'd be overcome with memory, trying to remember every moment as if doing so would extend it in some way. I wasn't, though. Instead was tracing the wispy auburn curls on Henri-Auguste's head with my eyes, watching the flutter of his lashes as he slept; feeling his baby skin brush against mine with every breath he took. I loved the way he fit into my arms. I loved the fact that he would grow and go to Hogwarts (I half suspected Sirius or the Twins had a pool going on which House they'd be in already) and learn in the same halls his loved ones had traversed daily, which his parents had met and hated each other initially but found love in, as my parents had, as he would, hopefully. I loved the fact that, one day, he'd be a man, maybe tall like his father, with my mother's hair and eyes, and he'd be able to carry on the Snape name for Severus… Instead I was watching my daughter dreaming, the soft waves of her dark hair brushing against the gentle curve of her neck where, someday, some one would kiss her and whisper, "I love you." Everything about her was so small and perfect, it was difficult to imagine that she'd once been inside of me, no more then a mass of cells, a living symbol of the love Severus and I had for each other that people had exclaimed over. Part of me wanted to believe that, if there was anything perfect and good in her, it was because of Severus, but you could tell she was mine by the way she held her head, sometimes, or moved her arms. She was a gift, one to be treasured, to bandage after playground scrapes, to be consoled at the ending of her first love, to grasp her hands tightly before her veil is lowered and she walks down the aisle, to smile back that secret smile when she first suspects she's pregnant, to cry with when in sorrow, to laugh with when happy – in short, to share life with. Knowing what I did, I should have taken up and whispered everything I could never tell her (not when death was so near), but she looked so peaceful asleep…

The clock on the nightstand told me it was quarter-to-five when at last I gave in. I took my children and tucked them into bed in their nursery, where the charmed ceiling showed a night glittering with stars. The enchanted crescent moon shown brightly enough that I could make out the stacks of books and notes I'd collected on the Horcruces, never knowing – never suspecting – that I was that which I sought. I picked one up, a thousand intentions ready in my mind, and then another, and another, until all the spiral bound notebooks I'd filled with speculations were in my hand. Walking slowly, I took them out to the living room and placed them in the empty gate, intending to set them on fire, as if by that act alone I'd be free, then paused.

Someday, in the future, when I was long dead, someone else might discover the secrets of the Horcruces. There might be another, like me, who strove to destroy them. With hebetic clarity, went back into the nursery and pulled the books off my desk, disturbing Paracelsus, who'd fallen asleep in the brightest patch of false moonlight, and grabbed my wand. Back in the living room, I tapped my wand once, twice on a brick at the back of the fireplace, and then another, and another, until I'd created a magically hollowed-out space large enough to store some future hero's bounty. When I was done, the fireplace bricked the opening over until you couldn't tell I'd done anything at all.

I was still in my daze when I re-entered the bedroom. Severus stirred a little as I climbed back into bed. "Something wrong?" he asked sleepily, already pulling himself into sitting position.

"No, love," was my reply, gently pushing him back down. "Just having trouble sleeping."

Wrapping his arm around me, he pulled me close. If only his presence could scare the monsters away! He felt sinfully real where we touched, all warm lines and hard planes – scarred, yes, and showing wear, but more perfect because of it, – and I couldn't resist turning my head but a little and pressing my lips to that hollow at the base of the neck where his collarbones pressed against the skin. "It's nearly time to wake up anyway," he shrugged it off, tilting my head with his free hand to meet his lips.

I responded hungrily, wanting to have as much of his as I could before the end, and rose my hand to his jaw. My fingers traced its shape and ran down his neck to his shoulders and chest, pausing to dally here and there before reaching the hem of his pyjama bottoms and taking the gauntlet back to tangle in his hair. Before long, the hand that kept my face secure to his had moved to pull me atop him, both hands resting – for the moment – on the small of my back as our chests, bellies, and thighs pressed together. It was a delightful feeling, one I hated to change but did anyway when I pulled myself up a little to better kiss him.

I moaned a little when his hands travelled lower, cupping my backside for a moment before travelling to the hem of my robe, then under, raking against bare skin as they helped me out of the thin covering. Where his fingers touched me, my body burned and sang for more until we were crashing together, a tangle of arms and legs and comfortable passion that I could live forever in…

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I felt distant as morning grew, unable to ground myself to reality as it surged and pulsated around me. There were miles of difference between accidental martyrdom and passive sacrifice and my mind was trying to cross that difference as fast as it could, not knowing when the final blow would land. I didn't see a way I could die and go on living, though I'd survived the AK before. My blood had been used in Voldemort's resurrection spell; my mother's protection, as far as it extended to physical shielding, had been negated and, nevertheless, transferred to my children. I couldn't count on it a second time.

I was going to die. You could see why it might be hard to concentrate on Potions, even if my husband was the one teaching. He was explaining what we (meaning my KoRT) had decided to do about NEWTs, since there wasn't exactly a Ministry to give them anymore. So the Hogwarts professors would give them, and I'd put my magic stamp on them and call them official… But forgive me if a) listening to someone explain an idea I'd partially come up with to people who'd much rather we just forgo NEWTs this year is enough to cause me near-physical pain and b) the fact that I might not live to take NEWTs made the whole situation doubly painful. So, instead, I stared at my reflection in the cauldron before me and tried to pull myself out of this funk.

It doesn't work. I just start thinking about the classes I have to teach after this, and how it seems I'm not going to break the curse on DADA teachers after all. Then I try thinking about something neutral, like tapioca, which somehow leads me to thinking about how global warming is destroying penguins' native habitats and, thus, their extinction. So then I started on something totally mindless and began listing the kings of England in order, but got tripped up at the Angevins and decided I should just stew in my funk and be miserable, because that was so obviously what I my body wanted to do today. It was God-damned annoying, and I just wanted to forget everything I'd dreamt of last night so I could get on with my life, however much time I had left…

Acel thought he could help by singing "Hey Jude," having recently developed a fascination for The Beetles because of their name. This fascination extended bands with all sorts of insectoid names and, as this line invariably led to a 'discussion' led by Par about the various pros and cons of each type of insect the Runespoor had encountered at Hogwarts, I was usually inclined to shutting him up before he could get too far. I let him have his fun today and continued staring at my reflection, barely paying attention to what Paracelsus may have been singing or doing.

I didn't know what to say, what to think. I knew I should do something for my children, right some letter or note or something for them so that when they were older they'd know I loved them… know something about me other then what people might tell them. …But [I] had the unfortunate gift of seeing things as they were, and the reality which was offered [me] differed too terribly from the ideal of [my] dreams. [I] did not know how wide a country, arid and precipitous, must be crossed before the traveller through life comes to an acceptance of reality… They were young, and no words or stories or anything else I could do could change the fact that they would not remember me. All they would know of me was that Voldemort killed me, like he killed my parents, and that I gave them long names they probably wouldn't understand or care for. I'd just be another tomb out by the lake to them. And what's a tomb to a child?

I was disrupted from my thoughts by a nuntius hitting me full force in the back of my head. Come to gate ASAP, the message said, Tonks sounding very Auror-like and not a little nauseated as she continued, a portkey arrived… with a message for you.

I didn't like the sound of something that might make Tonks sound nauseated, but gave a small, sad smile to Severus (my eyes probably to dull from my morbid thoughts to show all of the love and devotion I felt towards him in that brief second that I wanted him to know if this was the last time I ever saw him) and headed out to the gate. Thunderous claps were rumbling the school walls and I knew even without looking that it wasn't some late spring storm, as one might expect in Scotland, but something worse. Each clap sounded vaguely gong-like, less sharp and more scratching then you'd expect thunder to sound, especially in the bowels of the school. By the time I reached the entrance hall, I spared only the most perfunctory of glances towards the sky, but faltered at what I saw: a pale, golden light bubbled around the school protectively (the wards, I guessed) and reflected in that way soap bubbles and oil slicks as the morning light hit it. Radiating waves of violent colour – scarlet, acid green, electric orange – passed across the bubble with each 'thunder' clap, and the bubble shuddered.

The gate was a long walk from the castle, even at the brisk pace I forced upon myself. I could see, however, even at a distance gathered 'round the inside of the gate was the better part of the Order at Hogwarts. Rising over them was the old gothic sign proclaiming us the most magical place in all Britton and, beyond those iron bars, a mass of black and fear.

No. Not fear. That wasn't right. It was anticipation, dread, hesitancy, conviction, culmination and conclusion; it was the crescendo of adrenaline in the veins, quickening the heart and lungs, speeding everything around you until minutes lasted hours and desire to strike, to be done with it overcame apprehension; it was the panic of seeing the massed enemy too, masked and faceless, in such overwhelming numbers and knowing that they cared not about you, not whether you lived or died, or had a family, wealth, power, or prestige, because, if we failed here, our cause would be lost forever.

That was what they felt; the emotion rolling off of all of them so strongly it was a scent in the air, "Overture to Egmont" in my ears. The fear, from so deep down I'd never delved so far before, I sensed coming from myself. Whatever the panther had shown me about great-grandchild's birthday and said about it being possible was a lie. I was afraid to loose it and the future it came with. I was afraid to die.

But I kept walking still, and before long I was at the gate. The Order moved aside to let me pass easily, without fight. Their eyes hardly moved from the 'message' before the gate:

The body was naked, male, lying face up on the ground directly before the gate. Signs of captivity and torture were evident upon the pale, marble-white skin – streaks of mud on the hands and feet; sweat-and-blood-matted hair spackled to the cold face; raw cuts on the wrist and ankles; even the dark, fresh bruises were yellowing as the blood succumbed to gravity. A "Y" shaped incision, tracing from each shoulder and meeting at the breastbone before slashing straight through to the groin, splattered the area in such a way that made it all to evident that the heart had only just stopped beating when this occurred. On the forehead (only inches from the gate, so there was no mistaking it) was the shape of a circle inscribed inside a triangle and bisected by a single, straight line.

It was the mark of the Hallows, those wretched Hallows, and the body was that of Draco Malfoy. Though he'd never touched it, Malfoy had been the Master of the Elder Wand for almost a year. And now he was dead because of it.

I turned by back on the sight and spoke to Tonks, his cousin, who was closest. "Voldemort's coming to Hogwarts. Make the preparations."

She nodded and turned away willingly. Seeing this, I started up the path and took it the lake, where the marble tomb sat prophetically. I pulled out my wand and sat down beside it, waiting, and trying to convince myself that I wasn't afraid of what was surely coming next.

I sat like that for hours, knowing full well what was going on around me. Some were taking down the tent city; others were arming booby traps in the forest that would force the better part of the invading army onto the path, which too was being readied – trenches with spiked and spelled bottoms dug and covered with the illusion of being whole, tripwires that would shoot bolts of arrows; - while others too were readying the school. All around me wards were being placed, portkeys to the hospital wing and St. Mungo's being passed around.

And then, suddenly, sitting there thinking about everything that was being taken from me – that, when I'd become the Girl-Who-Lived, I'd also become the Girl-Who-Must-Die – I remembered something. A quote, naturally, because I never knew how to speak the words I felt, not in a way anyone else could understand them. The quote was from the Salvadoran novelist Manlio Argueta:

If I'm called on to shed blood, my blood it doesn't matter because it's for the good of everyone else.

I had to die. But my death would be all but the end for Voldemort. If I didn't, things would carry on as they were now. Other people would die, other lives would be destroyed. But, with one little death… my two little children wouldn't have the cloud hanging over their heads that we had…

If I had to die, I would go having destroyed as much of the Darkness as I could.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

I could not tell you how it happened if I tried. There are others, with better eye for such things then I, who could tell you the play of the battle.

There was a series of three ward layers around the border – one running along the walls with the strongest, heaviest of defences as well as the anti-apparition and anti-portkey wards; the other two were just inside the walls, with additional layers of the various anti- wards, but relatively weak – and an unknown amount of fortification around the gate. There must have been a decent arithmancer or three with them, because the Death Eaters didn't blast through the gate, but rather found the edge of the reinforcing wards and broke through the wall just outside of that late Friday night.

The Death Eater's sent the Inferi through after that, the dead, with their grey, shrunken skin and rotting bodies, flinging themselves at the inner shields until they collapsed. It was done mindlessly, the wretched beings plodding off in whatever direction they were sent in; some ran into the forest to be destroyed by the animals and traps there, while others still managed to circle 'round, flinging themselves at the wall in a travesty of an escape attempt. But when that much cannon fodder is sent through, it is inevitable that enough survive to cause damage. And men fell to them, the animated corpses of men and women and children with half-decayed bodies and inches of exposed bone mindlessly, tediously, overwhelmingly rending those they caught, smothering them as they mindlessly, tediously, overwhelming pulled the living limb from limb.

It felt like hours were spent merely destroying these monstrosities, sending ignises and flagarates and artafyrus (and, in my case and a very few others, the Darker infernus, which some called The Skin-Scorcher Hex for good reason). It can't have been, though, and someone else who was there could probably tell you better then me the details. All I know is that the night was alight with burning Inferi and whatever else managed to get caught up in the flames, and that, when dawn came, it was masked by the thick, oily smoke…

I was perched in a tree charmed flame-retardant fifty different ways near the edge of the forest during this time. My lower back ached from the awkward position I was forced to take and twigs, angry at my intrusion, scratched my bare skin to pieces, but it was better then standing on the ground, in the path of the monsters.

And then there were giants coming through Hogsmeade, and Inferi there too. And it was madness. Death Eaters were entering the grounds, and there was smoke everywhere, and spell-fire shadows emblazoned across the eyes of everyone in the field. There was screaming, and yelling, and moans of pain, and the raging of fire and the thudding of boulders as student volunteers from the old DA fired mangonels from the highest of the school's towers as the stones ripped into buildings and tore into the horny hide of the giants on the far side of the wall.

I am not a strategist. I can plan supply lines, but not battles, and left that to other people. Better people. All I know is that there were Death Eaters before me – enemies to fight in the deepest of black; hideous, inhuman masks over their human faces – and, when I fought them, sending backwards with iaceos or impedimentas or deprimos or dirumpis or sectumsemperas. One came forward, and it would be a spell through the gut. If he blocked it or came through it alive, I sent another. Powerful spells. Dark spells. Simple but effective spells. They came forward, and I knocked them down. Or, if I couldn't, I did my best to incapacitate them. I didn't notice the battering I took or the vibrant blue light that extended a good six inches around me. I did not feel tired. I did not feel pain. All I knew was anger, the seething anger that was the only counter to despair I knew, and went on murdering and torturing and debilitating the enemy for so long I wondered if Voldemort was holding anyone at all back from his assault.

The sun rose at some point and poked out from behind slick clouds, but I barely noticed it. Night or day, all I knew was that I was fighting as I always had for my life and, if I lived through this, by God and Merlin – and Herne and Hecate and Krishna and Yahweh and every angel and devil man had ever created, just to be safe – I'd, I'd….

But I wouldn't. I couldn't. So I prayed to the unknowable and unknown beings that I'd live through the madness of this battle, where everything swarmed and loomed and smelled of sweat and death and fear, so Voldemort could kill me.

God and all the rest, I hoped there was a hell. That way Voldemort could smoulder there for everything he'd done. And his Death Eaters. And, that way, even if these bastards die thinking they're the greatest thing since the bread-slicing charm, they can be called before whatever final judgement there is and be told by whoever's in charge, "You did wrong. You did terribly awfully, insanely wrong. You may have thought you were doing my will, but you weren't. I said be fruitful and multiply. I also said something about not murdering. And not committing adultery. And stealing. Or worshiping false gods and/or Dark Lords. If I wanted to rid the world of Muggleborns, I'd have done it myself; I'd not have needed your help with it. Remember that whole thing with the leviathan? The thing with the hook and the cord let down from heaven – that was me. By me, if I'd not wanted them, I wouldn't have made them in the first place. So, yeah, checking off the list, you murdered, stole, raped, pillaged, destroyed, massacred, tortured, coveted, bowed before false idols…. Pretty much the whole list of things-not-to-do, really. So you get to go with the goats and try, however futile it may be, to repent." The fact that I just had that thought shows how badly messed up I am. If the whole accepting the I-need-to-die thing didn't make that clear.

I don't know who I battled. I barely remember who I fought beside as I moved from the forest towards the castle, though I do recall throwing myself in front of a crucio meant for Tonks and throwing a very different Unforgivable back at the responsible bastard when I was able to breathe again. I don't think I wanted to know. It was easier if I didn't. But there was no mistaking the silence that fell when Voldemort came onto the field, late in the afternoon. I must have been fighting for twelve hours straight, and the Order members around me (Severus was there somewhere, I'd seen him; he'd been doing well for himself then. Sirius was here too, and Ari, and Remus, and Tonks, and Fleur, and Ron and Hermione, and all the world it seemed, and some were fallen, and we were being pushed back into the castle, and Mrs. Weasley was past her breaking point and fighting like a cornered cat as she screamed at whom I presumed to be Thickense for killing Fred, and I couldn't breathe when I heard that, but continued to fight….) were falling back, or I was moving forward. And there were cries for me to stop, to come back…

There was no denying it: I saw Voldemort, and I ran forward, throwing a shield up over me with one thought and a thousand curses I'd no strength left for with another. He was surrounded by a guard-cum-entourage of sorts – red-eyed Narcissa Malfoy, square-jawed Dolohov, and a couple of others I couldn't make out from behind their masks – as he made his way towards Dumbledore's tomb. I was the only one who knew, the only one who knew of the secret. Dumbledore had won the wand from Grindelwald, whom he'd loved. Draco had killed Dumbledore, though the wand had been pointed at me. Voldemort, presumably, had murdered Draco and sent his minions to leave his corpse as a message before the gates of the school. A equals B equals C, Voldemort was now the master of The Elder Wand.

The innocent fairytale echoed in my head as I rushed to cut him off, to reach the white marble sepulchre before him and defend it with my life, if necessary, too keep him from getting the legendary wand inside… So the oldest brother, who was a combative man, asked for a wand more powerful than any in existence: a wand that must always win duels for its owner, a wand worthy of a wizard who had conquered Death! Everything was so clear in my sight now that everything I'd forced myself to ignore to force myself to this end became falcon-sharp to my bleary eyes:

There were a good two dozen bodies littering the ground between where I was and my destination. Some of them were cold and still, that grey pallor setting into their skin that instinctively caused any who saw it to shy away. Of these, some had apparent causes of death that caught my eyes as I leaped over and hurled myself around them. There were bloody wounds that stained the baby's breath of grass a dark red-black, making it slick beneath my feet. Others sported purplish marks across the neck, or no neck or waist at all, a few white vertebrae sticking cruelly beyond the torn flesh. The others were groaning, moaning, trying to pull themselves to unsteady feet or falling into that final slumber to which so many here today had been condemned. Faces, wracked with pain or showing only dim surprise, stuck out in my memory. I knew so many of them, very few well, but they'd been my fellows, my enemies, my friends, my opponents.

The sky was a clear blue, the smoking having started to billow to the south now, away from the majority of the fighting, leaving the sun to shine coldly over the slaughter. It sparkled off the lake blindingly. It was a beautiful day, the kind Scotland rarely sees, being both clear and warm without being overly humid. Students should have been out on the grounds, taking in the spring, doing homework or trying futilely to study for real exams. It was almost a mockery of any and everything we believed in. It was a terrible day, ergo according to the Romantics it should be dark and thundering, quite possibly raining.

There was fear and hatred and something else stuck in my throat, making me want to be sick, to fall to my knees and gag and just die already because that's all I was good for. There was weariness in my bones, which didn't know how they found the strength to run…

And then I was before the tomb, staring straight at my executioner. "Hello, Tommy," I said, voice somehow strong despite it all. "Took you long enough." Great, I was teasing him again. I really needed to learn to control my sarcastic impulse. It would get me in trouble one day. Like today.

"Harry Potter," he said very softly. I spared a glance from him to look towards the castle. A few of the Order – so distant I couldn't make them out as anything other then coloured blobs in the distance – were rushing to my aid. I wished they wouldn't. It was between the two of us, just the two of us, just as it had always been, no matter how much I wanted to be stopped, to be dragged back, to be sent back home… But Hogwarts was my home, no matter the Château d'Nuages the Potter family had in Calais that I'd never seen but had been told I was born in, or Grimwauld Place, or the Snape family home Severus had once mentioned in Kent. It was the first ad best home I had known. Me and Voldemort and Snape, the abandoned children, had all found home here… and were all fighting as if for home now… "The Girl-Who-Lived."

I considered curtsying in mockery, but decided my legs couldn't take it. "It's Éléonore Snape, actually, but you can call me Countess Dover."

He hissed, the snake-like slits that took the place of a nose on his face flaring.

"That isn't the way this works, Potter."

"Isn't it?" I swayed a little on my feet, but kept at it. Sing-song, "'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord,' that's you," I inserted, "'approaches… Born to those who have thrice defied him,' that's my parents, 'born as the seventh month dies,' that's me. A equals B equals C, Tommy dearest." He strode forward, the snake that was his one other Horcrux circling around his feet. I wondered where Paracelsus had gotten to in all the fighting, and if he was okay, and if Winky had managed to keep Claudia and Henri-Auguste safe, and how Severus had managed. "'…neither can live while the other survives,' and one of us is about to leave for good…" Yes… me.

"One of us?" he taunted me in return, not understanding. He was lazily pointing his wand at me, as if I posed him no challenge at all. For all my magic and all my knowledge, I wouldn't stand a chance against him in a fair fight. But neither of us fought fair, now did we? "You think it will be you," (a snake-like laugh that would've sounded more human coming from my Runespoor). "You think it will be you, do you, the girl who has survived by accident. Who are you going to let die for you today? Your traitor of a husband, perhaps? Your mutt of a godfather?"

"No. You won't be killing anyone tonight. You won't be killing anyone ever again."

He honestly laughed then, and it was a sickening sound. "You think you know more magic then I do? Than I, than Lord Voldemort, who has preformed magic that Dumbledore himself never dreamed of?"

I debated on saying something about how he shouldn't end sentences with prepositions before deciding that I needed sleep really badly. No matter, it'd be over soon just 'one moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep forever, and ever and ever. It might be restful, death. Peaceful. Maybe there was a Heaven, and I might see my parents there, if I wasn't sent to the other place for all the evil I'd done. But at least the war would be over, and my family and my friends and all the world could move on with their lives. "Oh, he dreamed of it, alright. So've I, for that matter. I killed Lucy, you know, and Trixie too. Bet that must have pissed you off. But at least I knew enough not to do what you've done-"

He was getting angry then, and angry men did stupid things, as I'd long ago learned. "You mean you both were weak! Too weak to dare, too weak to take what might've been yours, what is mine!"

"Yes, yes," it was almost dismissive now, my voice. I felt so old standing there, trying to be brave, as I waited to die. It was all I could do not to vomit, and even then I only think I managed because I'd not eaten anything in pick-your-deity–knew how long. "You killed Draco Malfoy. The Elder Wand is yours. But the wand chooses the wizard, they say…"

Snorting now, becoming brave as he prepared to slaughter a seventeen-year-old girl, "You think it would choose you-"

"Me? I think nothing. I know. I know about the little half-blood boy from St. Giles' who was so proud of himself for scaring two little orphans that he went back later and hid Slytherin's locket there. I know how you killed one of the Hufflepuff heirs, Hepzibah Smith, for her ancestress's Cup, and how you hid it away in Trixie's vault at Gringotts. I know too how you found the lost Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw and hid that away too, in a room you thought in your arrogance no one else ever had or would learn about – just so you know, the Malfoy's former House Elf told me where the room was. Dumbledore found your grandfather's ring, so I can't take credit for that one, but I did destroy your diary and your pet Basilisk when I was twelve. I know how this just puts one little thing between me and your end, Tommy. Regardless of whatever wand you're claiming at the moment."

Those that had run forward to stop me were now being held off by his guards – Severus was fighting Dolohov, Sirius Cissy; Tonks and Remus and, surprisingly, McGonagall holding off the other four masked ones; others had come down towards the lake, students mostly, and were watching the proceedings with a mixture of awe and fear, as if they knew this was my last stand – and we each turned to look towards them – me, as if hoping I could say goodbye, properly, to the man I loved; Voldemort, too see how much time he had to taunt me, to point out that he'd still one more Horcrux and I'd tested my luck too much for one lifetime – for a moment, then back to each other. His hate-filled red eyes bore into mine, which were fighting not to blink. So this was it. This was the end.

"Are you going to dare then to be so ignorant? Are you going to use Dumbledore's favourite solution," he spat, "love, which he claimed conquered death, though love did not stop him from falling from the tower and breaking like an old waxwork. Love, which did not prevent me from stamping out your Mudblood whore of a mother like a cockroach, Potter – and nobody seems to love you enough to run forward this time and take my curse. So what will stop you dying now when I strike?"

After a pause, "Nothing." It was true. The only thing that could stop me was me, and I'd not even try. The pause was only because I'd debated quoting, "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine," and decided that, if I must die today, my last words would be my own, however simple.

The Dark Lord laughed then, and I gave a tight grimace of a smile in return. Them, suddenly, without further drama, he rose his yew wand towards my chest, and I aimed mine just as quickly. His voice was the sound of a snake screaming, high-pitched and glass-shattering, as he shouted, "AVADA KEDAVRA," and the sickly green spell came rushing towards me. Mine was calmer; a whisper of things left undone, as I rapidly lowered mine towards the still-circling Nagini: "Avada Kedavra."

A rushing wind filled my ears as I felt my body s…l…o…w…l…y begin to collapse, all warmth and light flitting away; but I saw my own spell hit the snake Horcrux first, and smiled as I let death take me.

) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) (

I knew immediately it was Hell because, presumably, the ground wouldn't be violently shaking like it was now if this was Heaven. I knew I should move, to get out of the way of the sharp stones hitting my back and legs, or at least to lift my head up out of the mass of sweet-smelling grass, but I couldn't bring myself to do so.

There was a ringing in my ears that I couldn't quite understand at first, but it faded away quickly, and I prepared myself to hear the screams of the damned, or whatever constituted background noise in Hell. But, when it cleared, it was not cries of torture that I heard, but howls of despair.

"No, no!"

"Ely!"

"Éléonore!" they were calling, weeping openly for me, while others protested at the desecration of Dumbledore's tomb…

"It's mine," he whispered so low that only I (now beginning to suspect I wasn't as dead as I thought I was) could hear. "The Elder Wand is mine." I could hear the sound of feet on marble splinters, the muted, gravelly sound. Then, as if declaring victory, I heard the voice amplified. "Harry Potter is dead. The battle is won. You have lost many of your fighters. I have killed your so-called hero, the Girl-Who-Lived. There will be no more war, and any who continue to resist, man, woman, or child, will be slaughtered, as will every member of their family. Come forward, kneel before me, and you shall be spared. Your parents and children, your brothers and sisters will live and be forgiven, and you will join me in the new world we shall build together."

There was silence, and pain coming back to my limbs.

To my surprise, it was Severus who spoke next, coming from closer then I'd realized. He'd never been one for tears, but his voice sounded tight, forced, as if he was restraining a Gryffindor-ish desire to throw himself at his wife's (seeming) murderer until there was nothing left but a bloody pulp of one of them. "I bowed before you once, and would rather die then do so again."

Darkly, "So be it." I swore I could hear his wand rising, and I stopped thinking about how on earth I wasn't dead and how I had to be lying in or around pieces of Dumbledore's tomb (which, from the sounds of the explosion, meant I was probably lying in or around pieces of Dumbledore too) or any of the rest of it, but only about my family. Severus was going to die, thinking me dead, and leave our children alone. I wasn't going to let him do that. I wasn't going to let my children loose their father…

Not realizing what I was doing, I pulled myself painfully, wretchedly, and all too slowly to my feet. But it didn't seem to take that long, not when I saw Voldemort still aiming his wand, not when it seemed nobody had realized my supposed corpse was moving. My wand was gone, who knew where, but I wasn't thinking of wands anyway. Madly, painfully, wretchedly I ran the small distance and flung myself at the Dark Lord's back and, amazingly, in his surprise, he fell.

I started beating on him – yes, Voldemort was facedown for the moment, and I was half atop him, pounding at him with my fists that were starting to glow a bright and terrible blue – and muttering incoherent things, how he couldn't expect to try to kill my husband, try to kill me, and get away with it, while all around me the people were shouting how I was alive, how it was a miracle, and Severus, who'd been poised to die fighting, stood stock still in shock.

Voldemort struggled to get up, but it was surprise more then my great weight that seemed to keep down. He managed to roll onto his back, though, and see my glowing hands on his neck as he sputtered, "But I killed you… you were dead…" and I spat, "Suvula," The Awl Charm, and saw the blood drench the hands that had been ineffectually strangling The Dark Lord and pass straight through what had, once, been his neck and stop at the soaked ground beneath.

"No, Tommy boy," I heard myself saying, "I killed you."

The silence hung in the air, the moment continuing long past the ticking of Time: and then the wave broke and I was at the centre of it, and there were screams and cheers and roars from the watchers, and Severus had somehow reached me and pulled me into his arms, kissing me mightily despite the blood on my hands and the crowd around us, and there were hands reached out to touch me, to thank me, as someone started repeating over and over again that the war was ended, that it was over, and at some point we managed to get away, just Severus and Sirius and Tonks and Remus and all and me, and we descended upon HQ, where more hands shook mine and thanked me and Winky handed me my children, who were overwhelmed at the noise but Claudia laughing at it all, and someone (probably Paracelsus) turned on music and there was dancing and rejoicing and a bottle of the Potter vineyard's finest cremant d'Alsace brut rosé – a 1953 – put in my hand, and no one could sleep and some were mourning and names of the dead said with honour (for ours) and disgust (for theirs) and there was Ari coming to me to try and get some sort of Ministry thing set up to start the recovery but never got very far because Sirius, who'd been praising the cremant d'Alsace brut rosé, almost immediately jumped up and kissed her fiercely, dipping her almost to the floor as some of the Order cheered and Fleur passed a handful of galleons to Tonks's free hand (the other being taken up by little Teddy as she tried to get him to change his hair to a bright victory gold) and I knew, just knew, as I sat there, surrounded by everyone I loved, Henri-Auguste at my breast and a tired but too-excited to sleep Claudia bouncing on Severus's knee as a smile crossed my husband's face and Paracelsus fiddled across the room with the radio, that our lives were ours now. And we would live as happily as could be expected for the rest of our lives, … until there came to us Death, the One-Who-Destroys-All-Happiness.


	34. Claudia-Éléonore Séléné Lupin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why do you weep? What are these tears upon your face?  
> Soon you will see all of your fears will pass away.  
> Safe in my arms, you're only sleeping.
> 
> "Into the West" as sung by Annie Lennox in The Return of the King
> 
> * * *
> 
> Epilogue

Throughout my childhood, I was certain that Mère knew everything in the world that there was to be learned and, what little she didn't know, Dad knew. They were geniuses, my parents; heroes even. Nobody else in Hogwarts had professors for their parents or had lived in the castle until they were eight, when "The Boys" were born and Mère decided that our family had finally outgrown our dungeon rooms.

I loved Dover House, with its huge yard and barn where Mère let Octavia keep all of the strays she was constantly finding or, as Paracelsus liked to say, had found the notes he left at Hogwarts so they'd know where to find us. For as long as I could remember, I was always exploring the cliffs and the forests; I always took Paracelsus with me, ostensibly to keep an eye on me, which soothed Mère's nerves a little. She always worried about us, though she hated to let us see it.

But still, my childhood was filled with other children, be it at Hogwarts or at Dover House. I can hardly remember a time when my 'pseudocousins' weren't around, or their parents, or any of Mère's friends from work. I remember a time – I had to be eighteen, because I Henri-Auguste had turned seventeen and I'd caught him not a week before kissing Lillian Black, our just-turned-fourteen-step-aunt, behind the boathouse on my way back from a late night walk, and had only promised not to tell Dad or Grandpa Sirius – when we, as a group, went to the zoo.

Now, if I was eighteen and Henri-Auguste seventeen, that made Teddy Lupin seventeen too, and "The Girls" - Julia-Athéne and Octavia-Margot – and Victorie Weasley about-sixteen, John Lupin and Lillian's brother, James, fifteen; Dominique Weasley and Lillian fourteen, Andrea Lupin and Frank Longbottom thirteen; Louis Weasley, Alice Longbottom, Neville Junior and "The Boys" - Alexandre-Frédéric and Grégoire-Matthieu – eleven, and the rest – Rose and Hugo Weasley and Stéphane and Michèle Caudwell about six or eight. Which meant, yes, our collective parents had dragged over ten teenagers to the zoo along with our young pseudocousins, actual cousins, and step-niece and –nephew (depending on who you were talking too). Octavia of course was over the moon about it and had run off to do one of those Zookeeper-for-a-Day things with the lemurs. Victorie and Teddy had just started dating, so they were useless to be around, as were Henri-Auguste and Lillian (not that I'd want to be around either of them anyway), and it's not like I wanted to pal around with the younger ones, so I was prepared for a day of utter boredom. Even Paracelsus was abandoning me to go to the reptile house with Mac and Xandr. But Mère, the all-knowing, took me aside while Dad was paying for us all.

"I know going to the Zoo with your family is not something most eighteen-year-olds would want to do," she told me. Being only sixteen years older then me, Mère was only in her thirties and blessed enough to look younger, though it did have the odd effect that, when I turned thirteen, she sat down and had "the talk" with me and made sure I knew both where she kept her contraceptive potions (in her vanity behind the toothpaste) and the condoms (in Dad's nightstand, shudder) from that day on. I loved Mère, I loved her quirky sense of humour, I loved how both she and Dad had a hundred galleons apiece in the what-house-will-Claudia-get-into pot when I was sorted and had laughed when they both lost; I loved the way that, if you asked her about anything, she'd tell you the honest truth, unless it was about birthday presents. I hated her "talks" and the fact that she still took the yearly Sex Ed class for Third to Seventh Year girls by the time I was a student.

I said something about how I'd just sit by Regent's Canal or something until they were done. Think about my future, you know? I'd just graduated at this point and was a) looking for a flat and b) for something to do with the rest of my life, and hadn't gotten very far with either. I'd a notebook with me, like always, and might manage to do some writing.

"You have your cell phone with you?" she asked, like she had before we left the house, as we pilled out of the three magically expanded cars it took to get us here, and as we'd gotten into the queue. She wouldn't let any of us kids go anywhere in the Muggle world without one; we'd lost a good number of decent cells left in purses or pockets when we went to Quidditch or Diagon.

"Still do."

"Any Muggle money?" I shook my head at that. She passed me a couple of twenty-pound notes, turned to look back at the group of children she was marshalling, then back to me. "Well, we should be ready to go by four. If you apparate back before then, text me to let me know." This in itself didn't surprise me – Mère had always given me a lot of trust, and, for the most part, I'd earned it. I thought. It was what she said next that shook me a little. "Why don't you take Jonathan with you?"

"Er, why?"

"Teddy and Henri-Auguste have both left him alone too, you know. If you're going to both be alone, you might as well be alone together."

So, at Mère's urging, I went over to John. He'd been a Ravenclaw with me and I'd spent most my life the group of them, but I didn't know him too well. He was quiet, like me, like Uncle Remus, and read a lot, also like the both of us. He wasn't a metamorphmagus like Aunt Tonks or Teddy. He was just John Lupin, Teddy and Andrea's brother. "Hey," I said.

"Hey," he said back.

"Er, want to get out of here?"

He looked around, slipped his hands into his pockets, "Sure."

I felt nervous for some reason – I always did when talking to people that weren't family; hell, I still had a hard time talking to Oliver without sputtering, and he was Mère's stepbrother and one of the nicest people in the world – and so asked him which direction he wanted to amble around in until we could head home.

"Camden Lock's not far."

It wasn't, though it seemed a little farther then it should because neither of us could think of anything to say to the other. To be honest, despite my multiplicity of choices, the only member of my bizarrely extended family I was close to was… well, none really. I was usually off in my own little world, telling myself stories and dreaming impossible dreams. We found ourselves in a bookshop before long, having made it out of the immense crowd, and it was only there, when I was perusing the Sci-Fi Fantasy section and he appeared from seemingly nowhere did any sort of conversation occur.

"I wouldn't read that if I were you."

I stared at the seemingly innocuous but still, if my current luck held, probably poorly written book in my hands. "Why not?"

"Zombies."

"Zombies?"

"Yes, zombies. I made a promise to myself to put down any book that had to resort to zombies. That one is one of them. Quite horrible, really – Alfred realizes he can't spend all his life running from Elizabeth and true love just because he might hurt her, and just as Elizabeth is about to get a dose of self-empowerment, Alfred comes back, fights off the horde of zombies who want to eat her brains because she's like the great-great-great-granddaughter of their creator, and sweeps her off her feet to live a blissful and child-filled ever-after."

"Ugh – I hate happy endings. They're so unrealistic."

"Not for our parents," he said, flopping down beside me so we were blocking the aisle. He took the book from my hands, placed it back on the shelf, and continued onwards. "They had their war and got their happy endings. Your parents with the teaching thing, Mum with being Head Auror now, and Dad with The Foundation. I suppose after war and stuff people want to forget about it all and overcompensate by trying to be too normal. Have you read Dune?"

"All of them, even his son's stuff."

"Ender's Game?"

"Both the Bean and Ender books; and his Homecoming Quintet. Hated the Alvin books, before you ask."

"Me too." It continued this way for several minutes – okay, an hour – and ended with me having to break my "two hardcovers or three paperbacks" rule in order to get all the books I wanted. I knew getting six books in one sitting was a little much, but it wasn't my fault I'd already found three books I wanted before John managed to talk me into trying Interview with the Vampire. I'd managed to talk him into getting Revelation Space and Cyteen, so I considered it a fair trade.

From there things opened up quickly between us, and I found myself talking to John like I'd not talked to anyone, really, but the adults I knew. I'd always felt closer to them. And here I was, talking with a boy three years younger then me that I'd grown up with but knew barely anything about. I guess we'd been too busy in our own little universes to see anything around us. But it was fun. We wondered into the Lock Lounge and talked for hours, about books at first but before long I'd one Long Island Iced Tea and he whatever was on tap and we were talking about ourselves too. I even told him what I'd only told my mother, about the book I was writing, Mangonel, which was about too many things too be clearly explained when imbibed, and how I wanted to get it published, but it wasn't like one could make a living as a writer and I'd have to find something to do with most my time, so Mère and Dad would probably end up giving me a pity job at The Foundation. I loved Mère, but it was hard, you know, growing up in the shadow of a hero when you aren't like Octavia or Julia or Henri-Auguste and know what you wanted to do with your life. Octavia would be a magizoologist, and Julia had managed to make it onto the Slytherin House team as Seeker her First Year and had talked about joining the Harpies since she was five, and Henri-Auguste was a potioner, like Dad, and would probably spend his years doing research that he could only afford because the family was loaded, thanks to French wine and North African land investments and whatever else no one but Aunt Fleur was really clear on.

"Life's a tapestry," he said after this, after we'd just told the bartender to work his way, alphabetically, through the drinks he knew until we passed out (and he'd said we were insane, asked for our car keys, and put a pair of Alabama Slammers in front of us), getting philosophical. "There's no right way to weave one. No matter how you weave it, no one pattern's better then the others. Some patters are more common then others, but that doesn't mean anything. Sooner or later the pattern in yours'll become clear."

"Oh my God – you've read Of Human Bondage too?"

And, at some point after this (I'm not sure when, but we'd gotten down to "C") I found myself kissing John Lupin, and John Lupin kissing me right back. Then I broke into hiccups, and couldn't stop for fifteen minutes straight.

Needless to say, though, Dad wasn't pleased when I came home smelling of booze and bar, and, instead of mercifully grounding me, denied me anti-hangover potion (which, though Mère had told me she kept a bottle of it next to the prophylactic potions, I felt too disgusted with myself for tonguing a Fifth Year I didn't even sneak any). Mum came into my room the next morning and asked how John and I had gotten along with such a knowing look on her face it made me wonder if she hadn't planned the whole thing.

But that was a long time ago now.

But that's how life went. Henri-Auguste went into his research, Julia to the Harpies, Octavia to the Institute of for the Research and Protection of Magical Fauna; Xandr to a primary school until '33, when Flitwick became Head and he took his place; and Mac – well, no one really knew what he and Michèle did in Paris, only that it involved a lot of parties.

Between John and Mère's support I finished Mangonel in 2017 and got it published three years later. I won't say it was a drop dead success, but it had its fans and I'd my cult of followers, which made me happy. John and I got married that February, and Nicolas-Alighieri was born that winter, and I finished the sequel, Ravelin… And Mère said to me, "See, Claudia," stroking my brow as I watched my son sleep, "everything turned out all right in the end. It always does, even if it's not what you're expecting." Dad said she'd been reading too many Portuguese psychological novels, to which Mère responded, "Time-turner yourself back thirty years and tell me if you believed yourself." Dad always got silent after that and indrawn. Mère was fond of telling us Daddy's story, about how was a true hero, because he'd worked real hard to be good and hadn't always been good because it was just what people did. She was her normal open self about his past, what of it she knew. It took a lot of pressing, though, to get her to say anything about her part in The Second War. She hated to be reminded of how she'd been Minister of Magic those two years between Scrimgouer's murder and Kingsley Shacklebolt's election the first year after reconstruction. She hated the awards that Aunt Andi and Grandpa Sirius insisted on putting up in Grimauld Place and conspired with Aunt Tonks to hide them or transfigure them into hilarious things. The Christmas I was nine, I remember they were miniature pigs with wings. When she talked about Unforgivables in her Fourth Year classes, she'd always get real quiet and even Paracelsus would calm down, and say they were the last resort of the barbarous; someone would always point out to her that the history books said she'd killed Voldemort's snake with an Unforgivable. "Even a wolf can dress in sheep's clothing," she'd say. I never saw the wolf she claimed she was, she was just Mère to me.

Ravenclaw that I was, I'd taken NEWT HoM, and the second half of Seventh Year, where they covered the fall of Grindelwald and the First and Second Wars, might as well have been about the family. I'd blushed ten degrees of scarlet when our history book – our history book – mentioned my parents' marriage and, later, my birth. Hell, I blushed whenever it mentioned my parents or pseudoaunts and –uncles. Still, I'd never enjoyed HoM half so much as when it was about the modern day things, so what if it said Mère had killed Lucius Malfoy or Bellatrix Lestrange or a dozen other people? They were just names to me, baddies who should were evil and deserved to die. And if some of the books thought Mère too biased a judge during the Carmarthen Death Eater Trials, or, perhaps, the death of Voldemort a particularly violent victory for the Light, she was still Mère. Just Mère.

I think my fascination with magical warfare is what led me to write Mangonel, Ravelin, and Réduit. It was my certainty that Mère was just Mère that brought me the idea that I would write a book about the Second War. Another series, even – Mère was so larger then life sometimes that I could tell her whole Hogwarts story.

Mère hated the idea. "Don't write books about me. I don't deserve them."

"But you're so literary, Mère," I'd argued back.

"So? Your father reads as much as I."

"You know what I mean. I couldn't create a better character then you. Bold, brave, passionate – bitterly sarcastic – you name it, you've got it."

"My story's not an interesting one. Write about Sirius – he spent twelve years in Azkaban and broke out to save my life when he thought it was in danger. Write about your father – the life of a double agent has to make for good reading. Or write about Dumbledore. Someone needs to tell his story properly. I've still got his Pensive too… He spent all his adult life trying to be a good man."

"But they all did those things for you, Mère. Grandpa broke out for you-"

"To understand just one life," she told me, "you have to swallow the world."

"Midnight's Children. Salman Rushdie."

The idea still tickled at me, through the birth of seven more children and two more books – until I'd twelve nieces and eleven nephews; Octavia's son Gordon only two months older then my first grandchild, my son, Nicolas-Alighieri, and Julia's oldest, Alexandria-Marie's, daughter, Alexandria-Athéne. During the "Dynast Years" (as Mère called them laughingly, or the score of years that coincided with the end of the Muggle's Second Gulf War in 2020 and the start of the Chandra Missions to the moon in 2040) the world just was, for us. There wasn't the fear that settled over even the Wizarding world that came later, during the Cold War-esque build up between the spacefaring countries, or the neo-Death Eater groups that came to the fore in the '40s. Mère left Hogwarts in '25 to start a law firm with Grandma Ari, then ran for Head of DMLE (for "real" this time) seven years later and won, becoming MoM when the Brocken Knights assassinated Minister Kingsley Shacklebolt, who'd been Minister since the end of the Second War, in '36. Dad became Headmaster of Hogwarts the year before that. Julia and Octavia, who were as different as twins could be (though both were red-haired like Grandma Lily and dark-eyed like Dad) and marrying Professor Longbottom's sons, Frank and Neville Junior, had three different periods when they'd not talk to each other and passed notes via their children when they'd something they had to say – one of these occurring during Christmas of '28 and resulting in Mère locking them in a room together overnight without their wands.

I wrote other books. John and I went on holiday to Las Vegas that the kids teased us about mercilessly for years after. The kids grew up, moved out of the house, and married. They gave me grandchildren, went into the Ministry (the two metamorphs, Claudia-Joséphine and Christophe-Vergilius, became Aurors like their grandma; Gabriel-Aurélies followed after my mother) or the Foundation or (as Eléonore-Isabeau, the only other parselmouth besides Nicolas-Alighieri of my kids) opened a reptile shop on Diagon. Mère retired as MoM, for the second time, in '60, and joined the Wizengammot. Then Nicolas-Alighieri Alexandria-Marie's youngest, Joséphine-Thérèse, killed herself on her seventeenth birthday.

That was a long time ago, now, but my granddaughter's coffin was the first to join Grandpa James and Grandma Lily's. Uncle Remus would join her in 2080… We didn't want to put her with Dad's parents at St. Edmund's – that seemed too cruel, even if none of us, not even her twin, knew exactly why she did it. We hadn't thought she'd been depressed, or sick, or whatever other reasons people have for killing themselves. I'd never seen Mère cry so hard in my life – not during Moulin Rouge or Twelve Nights, or Minister Shacklebolt's funeral, not anything. It was the first time she didn't have an answer to give me, no more then I'd an answer to give my children, now in their late thirties and forties, why their daughter and niece might've done this. And they had no answers to give their children, and even Alexandria-Athéne's news that she and her husband, Damien Acton, were pregnant could do little to change the mood…

But now there's a nice little plot of graves around my grandparents' graves, like headstones were some new sort of crop. Grandpa Sirius was to the left, next to Granddad, with Grandma Ari on his other side. Uncle Remus and Aunt Tonks have the plots in front. Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron aren't here – they're with the rest of the Weasleys in Summerset – but their weight might well be. My granddaughter's plot, now heavy with thin, hair-like grass, is several spaces down, along the stone fence that surrounds the section my parents bought for this purpose. There's space for me and John, for Henri-Auguste and Lillian, Julia and Frank, Octavia and Neville Junior, Xandr and Rose, Mac and Michèle; space for our kids and probably most of our grandkids as well. Mère wanted us all in one place, or close enough to count. Mac moving to France was terrible for her.

Today is terrible for me. I can't bring myself to dwell on the reality of the moment; instead, I keep travelling back in time with my memories. I remember how, after Joséphine-Thérèse killed herself, we were disconsolate. So many of us… and none of us noticed her sorrow. Mère went back to Hogwarts after that, teaching DADA like, I think, she really was happiest doing, despite what people said about the wonders she did in both her terms as Minister of Magic, despite her fondness for the law and the logic she saw in it. She loved children because she never was one. She loved with all her heart all those she came across. I think she even loved Voldemort, or the boy he had been before he became a monster. Every murder she ever did was out of love for those her victims would have killed. If that made her a wolf, I don't know, but I remember her as the young woman who was my mother and my teacher and the supercentenarian who was too shocked to even cry when Dad died, whose hand I held the whole time, though, Merlin, I was nearly a hundred myself then and my grandchildren had infant grandchildren of their own.

I can't help but remember that day now. Dad died two days after his hundred thirty-fourth birthday, breathing when he went to bed that night and dead when Mère woke beside him the next morning. She just kept on trying to wake him up, looking so sad and small there as she shook his shoulders. If Paracelsus hadn't managed to floo Alcantara – my house in the Scottish highlands – and relate to me what had happened, I think she would have been there until a member of the staff came looking for them on Monday.

I flooed to Hogwarts as quick as I could, leaving John to call my brothers and sisters before following me. "Mère!" I'd called when I arrived, alarmed when the portraits of the past Headmasters and Headmistresses were silent as I entered – I don't think that had ever happened before. "Mère! It's Claudia! Paracelsus flooed me. Where are you?"

The Runespoor was almost six feet long, easily four inches thick, and as vibrant orange as ever, but still I almost missed him when he hissed, "She isss."

"In the nest."

"With Père," from the shadowed door. No, my eyes were too stuck on the new portrait that had appeared, quietly hunched in a chair sleeping, a book open in his lap and a cauldron boiling away on the table beside him. It was Dad – maybe eighty or ninety years younger, but it was still Dad, there in the frame by McGonagall and Flitwick.

I made my way slowly to the bedroom then, knowing what I would find but still not prepared for Mère, so stalwart and strong and everything a girl imagines her parents to be, trying so desperately to wake Dad up. "Please," she kept on saying to him. "Please, please, please, Sev'rus, wake up. Wake up, love. You can't leave me. Don't leave me alone."

"Mère… Mère, please," I tried, however futilely it might have seemed, to calm her. "It's too late. Daddy's gone…" As soon as I was there, she went with me willingly, following my guiding hand into the sitting room and saying nothing as Xandr, then Julia, Octavia and Mac arrived.

She barely ate in the days before the funeral. The only words I heard her speak were in her classes, which she was still taking though she was now, by Dad's death, as she seemed to be everything, Headmistress of Hogwarts. She showed her strong face to the world, but was broken at every mention of the funeral plans.

And now Dad is buried one spot to the right of Grandma Lily. To his right, I suppose whoever dies among us first – Henri-Auguste, Julia, Octavia, Xandr, Mac, or I – will get that spot. In the space to his left, we're burying Mère today.

The last twenty years were hard on her, without Dad. I think she needed him more then she'd ever care to admit. He was the earth and moon and stars to her and, if asked, she probably would have told you that he moved the heavens too. She went on, was a brilliant Headmistress by anyone's standards, but a day didn't go by when she didn't think of him. She'd jokingly say that he'd managed twenty years without her, it was only fitting that she'd to do the same or, "He promised to let me die first; neither of us were expecting me to come back, though," and try to pass if off lightly. Those of us who knew her, though, knew better then to believe this.

She started to talk about The Second War in those years. I guess it was easier to talk about when she had to say, "A century ago…," but, Merlin, I could ask her about anything and she'd remember it. She told me the story of how she and Dad first came to be in love (and how it all started because of a growth spurt and a hot classroom) and their first kiss (after she'd staked out his rooms for three days) and their wedding (before anyone but Dad knew she was pregnant with me, and where they'd renewed their wedding vows twice), and, entwined within it, was the story of Voldemort's return to power, his reign of terror, and his downfall.

She's been right all along, as usual. The story I wanted to tell wasn't just the story of Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Black Potter Snape, Baronne de Calais and Countess Dover. It was the love story of Severus Snape and Éléonore Potter. It was Grandpa Sirius's story of false imprisonment and escape. It was the story of the Deathly Hollows, which she'd told to all of us, but she'd given me the Cloak and I'd given it to Nicolas-Alighieri, and he to Alexandria-Athéne, and she to her daughter, Alexandria Acton, and she to hers, Alexandria Banks. When she has kids, she'll give it to one of them, and it will go on like this, presumably until the end of the earth. I don't know if the story of the three brothers is real, but she told me the Cloak was the one Ignotus Perevell won from Death, and, of all the things she's ever lied to me about, Santa Claus is the biggest that comes to mind. I'd told the same to Nicolas-Alighieri and he'd asked if Mère had the other two Hollows, then, or if it was just her way of making the Cloak seem less like a tool for rule breaking. I've always believed the latter, but it's still their story too. It's the tale of Dad's redemption, and Grandma and Grandpa's sacrifice, and of Dumbledore's struggles, and Grindelwald…

To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.

I'd written twenty-five books by this point. In the days after Dad died, I started to swallow the world. I read every book on the subject, talked to Mère and Paracelsus and Aunt Tonks and Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron while they were still alive, and scraped together every memory and document and fragment the family had.

I wrote The Sorcerer's Stone, resolving the mystery Mère had discovered.

I wrote The Chamber of Secrets, beginning the story of Tom Riddle and the War.

I wrote The Prisoner of Azkaban, highlighting Grandma Lily's sacrifice and Grandpa Sirius's torment.

I wrote The Goblet of Fire, resurrecting the monster as Dad and Mère fell in love.

I wrote The Order of the Phoenix, fighting the good fight as everything went Dark.

I wrote The Half-Blood Prince, joining my parents' marriage and my birth to the horrors outside Hogwarts' walls.

I wrote The Gift of Love, bringing, somehow, all the strings together with the end of the War.

I wrote them, and I locked them in my desk drawer. Now that Mère is gone, I suppose I shall send them to my publisher. There's nothing stopping me now… I know how embarrassed she'd be if I'd published any of them while she was alive.

But at least it was peaceful, in her sleep, like Dad. I think she was expecting it, because Paracelsus showed me the note in the nightstand:

Bury me with both wands.

tied about a strange wand I'd never seen before with a red, cracked stone set into its handle. Paracelsus is disconsolate, nonetheless, and I worry about him. I think he'll stay a couple days with me at Alcantara, but he'll invariably return to Hogwarts. He loves it there. It's his home, as it was Dad's, and Mère's, and Dumbledore's. Xandr will take care of him and, when Xandr passes, Miranda, one of his granddaughters, will probably be his next "keeper"…

He's singing out his sorrows now; the service will probably start soon…

There is such a crowd here, it's overwhelming. All the "Dynasts" are here, as Mère would call them – even Nicholas Banks, my great-granddaughter Alexandria Acton's son. I worry about him; he's twenty-two and been almost untraceable for the last five years, having travelled all over the world "surveying" magic. He looks pale and dark, which I find an odd look for a metamorphmagus, but I suppose all of them can't enjoy neon orange hair, like Aunt Tonks. He's also glaring at his sister, one of the dozen or so Alexandria's in the group, which I find odder, considering they used to be so close. I must just be seeing things. It is a funeral, after all, and if Nicholas wants to look pale, I don't blame him, - and friends and further relatives and well-wishers and delegates from the ICW and the Ministers of Magic for every country I can find on a map…

I can't understand how she's gone. I just keep staring at the tombstone already at the head of the pit and thinking: Mère, you've come back to us before. Come back again. Come back again. Come back again.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Severus Eteocles Snape

9.1.1960 – 11.1.2094

 

Alexandrie-Margaux Éléonore Henriette Potter

31.7.1980 – 2.8.2114

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors.  
But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.


End file.
